Quote Of The Day - Vivek Murthy

"Being gay is not a disorder. Being transgender is not a malady that requires a cure. Had I been Leelah Alcorn's physician, I would have told her exactly that. And that's the message I want other doctors, nurses, health professionals, and public health leaders to help get out to parents and children who may be confronting these issues." - Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, speaking today on a conference call about White House support for bans on "ex-gay" torture.

We Have A Surgeon General

Via the Washington Post:

President Obama's pick to serve as the next surgeon general was confirmed Monday evening more than a year and half after being nominated, the first of nearly a half dozen of the president's picks set for confirmation this week as Democrats prepare to cede control of the U.S. Senate. Senators voted 51 to 43 to confirm Vivek Murthy, a Harvard and Yale-educated doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, whose nomination had been in limbo amid concerns about his experience, and opposition from the gun lobby.

Senators in both parties had questioned whether he was too inexperienced for the job, or whether his efforts to get Obama elected and support the president's health-care law made him too polarizing a figure. But by far the most vehement opposition to Murthy’s confirmation came from the National Rifle Association, which called him a “serious threat to the rights of gun owners” because of his support of tighter gun control laws. That animosity in part dates to a tweet Murthy sent out in 2012: "Tired of politicians playing politics w/guns, putting lives at risk b/c they're scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue."

American Family Association: The Federal Government Needs To Call For Abstinence From All Gay Sex

Responding to a new Surgeon General report that even one cigarette could spur fatal heart attacks in some people, the American Family Association hate group says that it's time that the government issues similar warnings about gay sex. Because that first cock you suck can be the one that kills you.

What the surgeon general did not say but should have is that the same is true of homosexual behavior: the first act of gay sex can be the one that kills you. While drugs have been found to mitigate the damage done by HIV, there is no cure. Once someone contracts it, he has it for life, a life often tragically shortened by between eight and 20 years, according to the International Journal of Epidemiology. Smoking will cut six to seven years from the lifespan of the smoker, meaning a cigarette habit is less dangerous to human health and longevity than gay sex.

According to the Associated Press, “[T]here is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke.” Same goes for participation in gay sex - there is simply “no safe level of exposure.” If a case can be made that cigarette smoking should be made illegal, a far better case can be made for making homosexual sex contrary to public policy, as it was in every state in the Union until 1962, and in 49 states until 1972. It’s still against the law in 12 states, although the Supreme Court, in another egregious act of judicial activism, prohibited states from governing themselves in this matter in the Lawrence ruling of 2003.

The goal of the surgeon general’s office, since it can’t make smoking illegal, is to reduce the smoking rate from its current 20 percent to 12 percent by 2020. We currently have between two and four percent of the population engaging in gay sex. How about we ask the surgeon general to launch a crusade to reduce the gay sex rate from four percent to one percent by 2020? Says the surgeon general, in words that can and should be addressed to practicing homosexuals, “It's never too late to quit but the sooner you quit the better.” In other words, the official administration policy on cigarette smoking is abstinence. Let’s make it the official government position on gay sex.

Obama Picks New Surgeon General

Later today President Obama will name Dr. Regina Benjamin as the nation's Surgeon General. Benjamin has a reputation as a champion of the poor and uninsured. That was likely a factor in Obama's decision as he continues press for health care reform.

A decade ago, the New York Times called her "angel in a white coat," a country doctor who made house calls along the impoverished Gulf Coast, paid whatever her patients could scrounge. From those early days she has emerged as a national leader in the call to improve health disparities, pushed by the need in her own fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Ala., and its diverse patient mix - where immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos make up a growing part of the population. Her nonprofit clinic was rebuilt by volunteers after being destroyed by Katrina, only to burn down months later. Benjamin later told of her patients' desperation that she rebuild again, recalling one woman who handed her an envelope with a $7 donation to help. "If she can find $7, I can figure out the rest," Benjamin said last fall as she received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," money she dedicated to finishing that job.

In January, Obama asked CNN personality Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be Surgeon General, but Gupta declined.