Month: June 2007

by hilzoy

Dr. James W. Holsinger is George W. Bush’s nominee to be Surgeon General. He has already come under fire for anti-gay bias, founding a church that ministers to “people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian”, and other things. (Details below the fold.) But now comes the coup de grace: a report (pdf) he wrote for the Methodist’s Committee to Study Homosexuality in 1991, called ‘Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality’.

Holsinger’s basic argument is that (a) the penis was designed to fit into the vagina — witness the fact “that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other” — while the penis and rectum are not, um, meant for one another in the same way; and (b) one way to see this is to note how many, many, many bad things can happen to a rectum when it is used in this unnatural way. (Yet, oddly enough, “Few anorectal problems and no evidence of anal-sphincter dysfunction are found in heterosexual women who have anal-receptive intercourse.” Does Holsinger take this to show that God designed the female rectum to accommodate anal sex? Inquiring minds want to know.) Holsinger concludes: “when dealing with the complementarity of the human sexes, one can simply say, Res ipsa loquitur – the thing speaks for itself!”

There are long lists of sexually transmitted diseases that accompany homosexual sex, all presented without the comparison set of diseases transmitted via heterosexual sex, not to mention the various potential complications of pregnancy. There is a lengthy discussion of the nature and perils of fisting. But to my mind, the oddest part of all is this alleged piece of evidence that the rectum is not designed for sex:

“The structure and function of the male and female human reproductive systems are fully complementary. Anatomically the vagina is designed to receive the penis. It is lined with squamous epithelium and is surrounded by a muscular tube intended for penile intromission. The rectum, on the other hand, is lined with a delicate mucosal surface and a single layer of columnar epithelium intenuea primarily for the reabsorption of water and electrolytes. The rectum is incapable of mechanical protection against abrasion and severe damage to the colonic mucosa can result if objects that are large, sharp, or pointed are inserted into the rectum (Agnew, 1986).”

Perhaps Dr. Holsinger doesn’t have any first-hand experience of actual vaginas, though this seems unlikely, since he has four children. Possibly his wife just didn’t have the heart to tell him, and has been suffering all these years in silence. However, as someone who has an actual vagina of my very own, I can assure him that if one were to put a sharp or pointed object into one, “severe damage” would, in fact, result. It would be a very, very, very bad idea to insert, say, a poker, or a carving knife, or a pair of scissors, into a vagina. Just as bad as doing any of these things to a rectum. Really.

Maybe, on the other hand, he thinks that penises are sharp and pointed. Who can say?

Do we really want someone who doesn’t know these things to be our Surgeon General? I don’t.

More about Dr. Holsinger below the fold.

Read more

by hilzoy

(1): The Republican candidates for President seem to be engaged in some sort of arms race to see who can say the toughest-sounding things on foreign policy. Since very few of them seem to be constrained by any sort of realism (among the leading candidates, only McCain seems to retain some tenuous connection to the real world), this leads them to say things that are basically insane. Fareed Zakaria, in an article that’s worth reading in its entirety:

“More troubling than any of Bush’s rhetoric is that of the Republicans who wish to succeed him. “They hate you!” says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. “They don’t want you to be in this college!” he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. “Or you, or you, or you,” he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, “We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us.” On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. “This is reality, ma’am,” he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. “You’ve got to clear your head.”

The notion that the United States today is in grave danger of sitting back and going on the defensive is bizarre. In the last five and a half years, with bipartisan support, Washington has invaded two countries and sent troops around the world from Somalia to the Philippines to fight Islamic militants. It has ramped up defense spending by $187 billion—more than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, India and Britain. It has created a Department of Homeland Security that now spends more than $40 billion a year. It has set up secret prisons in Europe and a legal black hole in Guantánamo, to hold, interrogate and—by some definitions—torture prisoners. How would Giuliani really go on the offensive? Invade a couple of more countries? (…)

The competition to be the tough guy is producing new policy ideas, all right—ones that range from bad to insane. Romney, who bills himself as the smart, worldly manager, recently explained that while “some people have said we ought to close Guantánamo, my view is we ought to double [the size of] Guantánamo.” In fact, Romney should recognize that Guantánamo does not face space constraints. The reason that President Bush wants to close it down—and it is he who has expressed that desire—is that it is an unworkable legal mess with enormous strategic, political and moral costs. In a real war you hold prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. When does that happen in the war on terror? Does Romney propose that the United States keep an ever-growing population of suspects in jail indefinitely without trials as part of a new American system of justice?

In 2005 Romney said, “How about people who are in settings—mosques, for instance—that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror? Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping?” This proposal is mild compared with what Rep. Tom Tancredo suggested the same year. When asked about a possible nuclear strike by Islamic radicals on the United States, he suggested that the U.S. military threaten to “take out” Mecca.”

“Take out Mecca.” That’s the ticket. I wonder who will be the first to suggest preemptively turning the entire Middle East — or, better yet, the entire rest of the world — into radioactive glass on the grounds that we can’t wait for Muslims to become terrorists; we have to nip them (all of them) in the bud? Surely that’s the logical endpoint of this little bidding war.

Read more

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

“I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was sentenced today to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000 for lying to investigators about his role in leaking the identity of an undercover CIA officer.

The federal judge who presided over the case indicated that he may not be sympathetic to allowing Libby to remain free pending appeal, but scheduled a hearing on the matter for next week.

“Evidence in this case overwhelmingly indicated Mr. Libby’s culpability,” U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said moments before he handed out the sentence. The judge said he was sentencing Libby “with a sense of sadness. I have the highest respect for people who take positions in our government and appreciate tremendously efforts they bring to bear to protect this country.”

At the same time, Walton said, “I also think it is important we expect and demand a lot from people who put themselves in those positions. Mr. Libby failed to meet the bar. For whatever reason, he got off course.””

Good. People who break the law should do the time.

There’s also this gem:

“Cheney released a statement this afternoon lauding Libby’s long public service and expressing hope that his conviction will be overturned. “Scooter is also a friend, and on a personal level Lynne and I remain deeply saddened by this tragedy and its effect on his wife, Harriet, and their young children,” Cheney said. “The defense has indicated it plans to appeal the conviction in the case. Speaking as friends, we hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man.””

I believe that Libby lied to protect Cheney. If so, then however “saddened” Cheney might be, he wasn’t concerned enough about Libby to step up to the plate himself. It’s a bit rich for him to expect the legal system to make up for his deficiencies as a human being.

Salon has posted the letters that people wrote on Libby’s behalf. I haven’t read them all, but most of the ones I have read go on about how completely out of character the crimes he has been convicted of are. He is a person of unimpeachable integrity, a man of honor, a person of high principle, even, according to Gen. Richard Myers, “a man of integrity who always put our national security first.” (I didn’t know it was possible to put our national security first while outing a CIA agent. Live and learn.)

Oddly, none of the letter-writers go on to ask how someone of such honor and principle could have found himself, inexplicably, committing perjury and obstruction of justice. A brain spasm? A sort of anti-miracle? Inquiring minds want to know. Unfortunately, none of those inquiring minds belong to the people who wrote these letters. Funny thing, that.

One more note below the fold.

Read more