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Joycelyn Elders defends
same-sex marriage
Ex-surgeon general talks about
government interference and the
state of America's health at
California conference
by William Brand
of
OAKLAND, Calif. — Dr. Joycelyn Elders,
the outspoken former surgeon general of
the United States, recently had some blunt
advice on gay marriage for President
George W. Bush and the federal govern
ment: Keep your noses out of the bedroom.
- “I see no problem with gay couples
marrying,” Elders said, “it’s a decision
between two people — the government
has no business interfering.”
“I remember when it was against the
law for blacks and whites to be married —
and that wasn’t very long ago,” Elders
said. “The same people who are fighting
gay marriage fought black and white mar
riage and fought school integration.”
It’s been lO years since President Bill
Clinton was forced to ask for Elders’ resig
nation because of blunt remarks she made
about the need for sex education, including
“self stimulation” as an alternative to
unprotected sex out of wedlock.
Elders, 70, is still speaking out. And in
fact she and Clinton remain good friends,
she said.
“He had to let me go, but he knew I had
a good job back in Little Rock (as a pro
fessor of public health at the University of
Arkansas). In fact I got paid more as a pro
fessor than I did as surgeon general,” she
said.
In Oakland on Mar. 13 to address a
national meeting of the million-member
United Methodist Women’s organization.
Elders said when she left Washington at
the end of 1994, she took the advice of her
mother. “She said, ‘Never let your yester
days ruin your tomorrow.’”
Elders has never looked back. She’s in
steady demand as a keynote speaker and
she tells it like she sees it. “The moment
you see something wrong and don’t say
anything, is the moment you start to die,”
she said.
She confronts issues with unflinching
honesty.
For instance, obesity. It’s a terrible
problem. Elders said. “Can you imagine?
Sixty percent
Americans are
overweight, 18
percent of chil
dren are over
weight and 50
percent of black
women are
obese.”
Joycelyn Elders
Because of America’s weight problem,
we’re seeing an increasing amount of dia
betes, of coronary artery disease, she said.
Elders confesses she rarely exercises. “It’s
terrible. I went and bought this exercise
equipment, and I put it in my bedroom.
“I was using it to hang clothes on.
Finally, I just pushed it out of the bed
room,” she said.
■ “Problem is, we were made to do hard
labor every day, things like farm work,” she
said. “Now we’re off the farm, but we keep
eating as if we were still back there.”
One solution. Elders said, is education
about health in the schools.
“We need to educate our children so
they know how to take care of their bodies;
how to eat correctly; what happens if you
go drinking and drugging.”
And, yes, that includes explicit sex edu
cation, she said.
“We are very committed to building
smart weapons of defense. Why don’t we
invest in other things that are important,
like education?”
Also there’s poverty, she said. “We have
53 million children in our schools. Every
day 25 million of them get free or reduced
price school lunches because they are
poor.”
Elders knows a lot about poverty. She
grew up in a large family in a shack in rural
Arkansas with no electricity, no running
water and kerosene lanterns for light.
One of her brothers had an appendici
tis attack and her father put him on the
back of a mule and took him i 3 miles to a
hospital, she said. “But there was no hos
pital for black children,” she said. “A doc
tor came out and lanced his abdomen and
saved his life.
“I felt that if I ever got to where I could
be helpful to others, I would really stand up
and be helpful and try to be the voice, for
the poor and the powerless,” she said.
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