Past of Surgeon General Nominee Paints Confusing Pictures

Has President Bush nominated a Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Homophobe to be America's doctor, surgeon general of the United States?

The man that past associates of Kentucky physician James Holsinger describe sounds like two very different doctors — one professional and respectful in dealing with gay people; the other monstrously prejudiced.

Phyllis Nash, a professor of behavioral medicine, paints a reassuring portrait of the Holsinger she worked with at the University of Kentucky for nine years.

In the late 1990s, she says, Holsinger helped a gay university lawyer and his partner cope with terminal cancer. "The morning after he was diagnosed, Dr. Holsinger was there in his living room with him and his partner, offering support and guidance and counsel."

Later, Holsinger helped a lesbian employee of the university become a mother. "She wanted to have a baby, and Dr. Holsinger intervened and helped her to a sperm bank," said Nash, adding that the woman told her the story.

Then in 2002, several Kentucky lawmakers went into a tizzy because the university medical center intended to host a panel on lesbian health. Nash alerted Holsinger, the center's chancellor.

"He was unflinching," she says. "He said, 'We have an absolute responsibility to help health care practitioners meet the health care needs of lesbian patients.'" The panel met.

So, what's the problem? Other portraits paint a scary Holsinger, one not above using his medical credentials to try to cow non-physicians into echoing his hostility to homosexuality.

The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, a well-known theologian, has unpleasant memories of serving with Holsinger on a Methodist Church committee that studied homosexuality. With a "childish display of anger," Holsinger resigned, Wogaman says, because most of the committee favored being respectful toward faithful gay couples.

Before quitting, Holsinger, then chief medical director of the Veterans Health Administration, volunteered to share his expertise.

The result was a 1991 paper he titled "The Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" — in other words, gay male sex is unnaturally creepy.

Although dressed up with some academic citations, Holsinger's argument boiled down to homosexual sex is abnormal because it isn't heterosexual. Comparing people to plumbing, he concluded: "The logical complementarity of the human sexes has been so recognized in our culture that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming various pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other. When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur."

Wogaman told me: "Throughout the whole process, he was very clear. He was opposed to any recognition of homosexual practice as being in any way Christian or normal medically.

"We were getting other kinds of (medical) views that were not in agreement with (his)," says Wogaman, who warns, "Temperamentally, I think he is the kind of person who might be inclined to take a high visibility position of considerable medical authority (to express views) demeaning to numerous people in our society."

Before holding confirmation hearings, the Senate's health committee should review the literature: People can change in 16 years. On the other hand, Dr. Jeykll kept his bad side well hidden.

"Were I a senator," Wogaman says, "I would ask some very, very sharp questions."

Who is the real Dr. James Holsinger?

Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated column on gay issues. To find out more about Deb Price and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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