Dr. Hager's Family Values

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
If you're gullible enough to believe everything you read without critical thought or analysis, be my guest.

Bwhuahahahaha, as if you would even know that that means:laugh:

 

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
I see that the trolls are out in force.

You sure are!

 

[CQuinn]

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: conjur
Exactly, Red. Rip sees nothing wrong with the MAN raping his wife up the ass. Women are inferior objects and only serve as temptations. But, then again, Rip prefers the man-sex but just won't admit it.

Of course there's something wrong with it, if it's true.

The woman's statements don't stand up scrutiny so I seriously question her allegations.

The woman's statements stand up quite adequately for those of us who can apply an
understanding of the situation (and possible positions) involved. It is you who seems
unable to engage in scrutiny.

You seem to have formed the opinion that there is only one possible position from
which this "alleged" non-consensual sodomy could have taken place. And that
it would not be possible for her to resist from that position.

The first flaw I see in that analysis, is that if you have ever been in bed with
a significant other, you would have noticed occasions where one is subject to
kicks, elbows and even head butting... while the other person is facing away
from you. As others have also pointed out, applying those actions as
part of an effort to resist possible assualt is made even easier by the simple
action of turning the upper or lower body in either direction as needed to
remove the other person from close proximity to the body.

The second flaw is, if I read your description accurately, your implication
that Dr. Hager was actively seeking to subdue or bind his wife in such a
fashion as to make it more difficult to refuse his advances. Otherwise
it is physically impossible for an otherwise heathly adult female to
not be able to resist in some fashion. The simple act of trying to cross
ones legs and "clenching up" (for example) would be a sufficient signal of
unwillingness for most spouses to recognize and respect.

IANAL, but as I understand it a charge of "sexual and emotional abuse" would
be enough to allow the granting of a divorce in a court of law. Unless those records
were sealed it should be possible to check the proceedings leading to the divorce decree
to determine if Ms. Davis made those same charges at the time.

Otherwise she is potentially opening herself up to a charge of slander if her statements
to the reporter do not reflect the claims she made during the filing for divorce.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: BBond
I read this story in The Nation in total shock. Not at the "activities" themselves but at the absolute depraved hypocrisy of a person who would abuse their wife this way then have the nerve to stand in the pulpit and use the resulting divorce which was caused by his own sexual perversions, as a prop in a sermon.

These people are absolutely the worst people on the planet and yet they cloak themselve in glory.

What a bunch of hypocritical freaks.

Read on.

Dr. Hager's Family Values

Ayelish McGarvey

Late last October Dr. W. David Hager, a prominent obstetrician-gynecologist and Bush Administration appointee to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), took to the pulpit as the featured speaker at a morning service. He stood in the campus chapel at Asbury College, a small evangelical Christian school nestled among picturesque horse farms in the small town of Wilmore in Kentucky's bluegrass region. Hager is an Asburian nabob; his elderly father is a past president of the college, and Hager himself currently sits on his alma mater's board of trustees. Even the school's administrative building, Hager Hall, bears the family name.

That day, a mostly friendly audience of 1,500 students and faculty packed into the seats in front of him. With the autumn sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows, Hager opened his Bible to the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel and looked out into the audience. "I want to share with you some information about how...God has called me to stand in the gap," he declared. "Not only for others, but regarding ethical and moral issues in our country."

For Hager, those moral and ethical issues all appear to revolve around sex: In both his medical practice and his advisory role at the FDA, his ardent evangelical piety anchors his staunch opposition to emergency contraception, abortion and premarital sex. Through his six books--which include such titles as Stress and the Woman's Body and As Jesus Cared for Women, self-help tomes that interweave syrupy Christian spirituality with paternalistic advice on women's health and relationships--he has established himself as a leading conservative Christian voice on women's health and sexuality.

CONTINUED BELOW
And because of his warm relationship with the Bush Administration, Hager has had the opportunity to see his ideas influence federal policy. In December 2003 the FDA advisory committee of which he is a member was asked to consider whether emergency contraception, known as Plan B, should be made available over the counter. Over Hager's dissent, the committee voted overwhelmingly to approve the change. But the FDA rejected its recommendation, a highly unusual and controversial decision in which Hager, The Nation has learned, played a key role. Hager's reappointment to the committee, which does not require Congressional approval, is expected this June, but Bush's nomination of Dr. Lester Crawford as FDA director has been bogged down in controversy over the issue of emergency contraception. Crawford was acting director throughout the Plan B debacle, and Senate Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray, are holding up his nomination until the agency revisits its decision about going over the counter with the pill.

When Hager's nomination to the FDA was announced in the fall of 2002, his conservative Christian beliefs drew sharp criticism from Democrats and prochoice groups. David Limbaugh, the lesser light in the Limbaugh family and author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging Political War Against Christianity, said the left had subjected Hager to an "anti-Christian litmus test." Hager's valor in the face of this "religious profiling" earned him the praise and lasting support of evangelical Christians, including such luminaries as Charles Colson, Dr. James Dobson and Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham.

Back at Asbury, Hager cast himself as a victim of religious persecution in his sermon. "You see...there is a war going on in this country," he said gravely. "And I'm not speaking about the war in Iraq. It's a war being waged against Christians, particularly evangelical Christians. It wasn't my scientific record that came under scrutiny [at the FDA]. It was my faith.... By making myself available, God has used me to stand in the breach.... Just as he has used me, he can use you."

Up on the dais, several men seated behind Hager nodded solemnly in agreement. But out in the audience, Linda Carruth Davis--co-author with Hager of Stress and the Woman's Body, and, more saliently, his former wife of thirty-two years--was enraged. "It was the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," she recalled months later, through clenched teeth.

According to Davis, Hager's public moralizing on sexual matters clashed with his deplorable treatment of her during their marriage. Davis alleges that between 1995 and their divorce in 2002, Hager repeatedly sodomized her without her consent. Several sources on and off the record confirmed that she had told them it was the sexual and emotional abuse within their marriage that eventually forced her out. "I probably wouldn't have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time," she explained to me. "But it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible."

Not once during the uproar over Hager's FDA appointment did any reporter solicit the opinion of the woman now known as Linda Davis--she remarried in November 2002 to James Davis, a Methodist minister, and relocated to southern Georgia--on her husband's record, even though she contributed to much of his self-help work in the Christian arena (she remains a religious and political conservative). She intermittently thought of telling her story but refrained, she says, out of respect for her adult children. It was Hager's sermon at Asbury last October that finally changed her mind. Davis was there to hear her middle son give a vocal performance; she was prepared to hear her ex-husband inveigh against secular liberals, but she was shocked to hear him speak about their divorce when he took to the pulpit.

"In early 2002," Hager told the churchgoers that day, "my world fell apart.... After thirty-two years of marriage, I was suddenly alone in a new home that we had built as our dream home. Time spent 'doing God's will' had kept me from spending the time I needed to nourish my marriage." Hager noted with pride that in his darkest hour, Focus on the Family estimated that 50 million people worldwide were praying for him.

CONTINUED BELOW
Linda Davis quietly fumed in her chair. "He had the gall to stand under the banner of holiness of the Lord and lie, by the sin of omission," she told me. "It's what he didn't say--it's the impression he left."

David Hager is not the fringe character and fundamentalist faith healer that some of his critics have made him out to be. In fact, he is a well-credentialed doctor. In Kentucky Hager has long been recognized as a leading Ob-Gyn at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital and a faculty member at the University of Kentucky's medical school. And in the 1990s several magazines, including Modern Healthcare and Good Housekeeping, counted him among the best doctors for women in the nation.

Yet while Hager doesn't advocate the substitution of conservative Christianity for medicine, his religious ideology underlies an all-encompassing paternalism in his approach to his women patients. "Even though I was trained as a medical specialist," Hager explained in the preface to As Jesus Cared for Women, "it wasn't until I began to see how Jesus treated women that I understood how I, as a doctor, should treat them." To underscore this revelation, Hager recounted case after case in which he acted as confidant, spiritual adviser and even father figure to his grateful patients. As laid out in his writings, Hager's worldview is not informed by a sense of inherent equality between men and women. Instead, men are expected to act as benevolent authority figures for the women in their lives. (In one of his books, he refers to a man who raped his wife as "selfish" and "sinful.") But to model gender relations on the one Jesus had with his followers is to leave women dangerously exposed in the event that the men in their lives don't meet the high standard set by God Himself--trapped in a permanent state of dependence hoping to be treated well.

In tandem with his medical career, Hager has been an aggressive advocate for the political agenda of the Christian right. A member of Focus on the Family's Physician Resource Council and the Christian Medical and Dental Society, Hager assisted the Concerned Women for America in submitting a "Citizen's Petition" to the FDA in August 2002 to halt distribution and marketing of the abortion pill, RU-486. It was this record of conservative activism that ignited a firestorm when the Bush Administration first floated his name for chairman of the FDA's advisory committee in the fall of 2002. In the end, the FDA found a way to dodge the controversy: It issued a stealth announcement of Hager's appointment to the panel (to be one of eleven members, not chairman) on Christmas Eve. Liberals were furious that they weren't able to block his appointment. For many months afterward, an outraged chain letter alerting women to the appointment of a man with religious views "far outside the mainstream" snaked its way around the Internet, lending the whole episode the air of urban legend.

Back in Lexington, where the couple continued to live, Linda Hager, as she was still known at the time, was sinking into a deep depression, she says. Though her marriage had been dead for nearly a decade, she could not see her way clear to divorce; she had no money of her own and few marketable skills. But life with David Hager had grown unbearable. As his public profile increased, so did the tension in their home, which she says periodically triggered episodes of abuse. "I would be asleep," she recalls, "and since [the sodomy] was painful and threatening, I woke up. Sometimes I acquiesced once he had started, just to make it go faster, and sometimes I tried to push him off.... I would [confront] David later, and he would say, 'You asked me to do that,' and I would say, 'No, I never asked for it.'"

There are four more pages at the link, if you can stomach four more pages.

(Quoted the whole thing to help bury the trolls' duhversions)

Maher mentioned this on Real Time last night. He called it a gift to comedians. Personally, I see it as a great testimony to BushCo's extraordinary skill at picking the most hypocritical, vacuous, and generally vile people in existence to infest the administration. Way to restore "integrity" to the White House! ROFL.

 

[Gravity]

It seems to me that most people don't want their divorce details publicized. Cleary, this is he said/she said.

IMHO, whatever 2 married people do in the privacy of their bedroom is ok. OTOH, forcing your wife to do something she is not wanting, something that causes her unwanted pain, is rape.

All 50 states recognize this act, forced sex between man and women, no less husband and wife, as rape.

If it really happened, she could have pressed charges.

Divorces suck in a major way. This is just one way you could get trounced in the public eye.

 

[Riprorin]

Originally posted by: CQuinn

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: conjur
Exactly, Red. Rip sees nothing wrong with the MAN raping his wife up the ass. Women are inferior objects and only serve as temptations. But, then again, Rip prefers the man-sex but just won't admit it.

Of course there's something wrong with it, if it's true.

The woman's statements don't stand up scrutiny so I seriously question her allegations.

The woman's statements stand up quite adequately for those of us who can apply an
understanding of the situation (and possible positions) involved. It is you who seems
unable to engage in scrutiny.

You seem to have formed the opinion that there is only one possible position from
which this "alleged" non-consensual sodomy could have taken place. And that
it would not be possible for her to resist from that position.

The first flaw I see in that analysis, is that if you have ever been in bed with
a significant other, you would have noticed occasions where one is subject to
kicks, elbows and even head butting... while the other person is facing away
from you. As others have also pointed out, applying those actions as
part of an effort to resist possible assualt is made even easier by the simple
action of turning the upper or lower body in either direction as needed to
remove the other person from close proximity to the body.

The second flaw is, if I read your description accurately, your implication
that Dr. Hager was actively seeking to subdue or bind his wife in such a
fashion as to make it more difficult to refuse his advances. Otherwise
it is physically impossible for an otherwise heathly adult female to
not be able to resist in some fashion. The simple act of trying to cross
ones legs and "clenching up" (for example) would be a sufficient signal of
unwillingness for most spouses to recognize and respect.

IANAL, but as I understand it a charge of "sexual and emotional abuse" would
be enough to allow the granting of a divorce in a court of law. Unless those records
were sealed it should be possible to check the proceedings leading to the divorce decree
to determine if Ms. Davis made those same charges at the time.

Otherwise she is potentially opening herself up to a charge of slander if her statements
to the reporter do not reflect the claims she made during the filing for divorce.

Head butting? Kicks and elbows? Okay.

I never said that there was only one possible position.

According to her statement, she was asleep and woke up when she was entered anally, at which point she sometimes tried to push him off.

That suggests to me he's either on top of her as she's face down or behind her while she's on her side.

In either case, I don't see how she could be pushing him off - unless she has arms growing out of her back.

I don't buy the story.

 

[aidanjm]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
In either case, I don't see how she could be pushing him off - unless she has arms growing out of her back.

pics of women reaching behind their backs:

http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=GSH/GSH225/GS115022.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=IMG/IMG221/10051014.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=FSP/FSP152/052017.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=BNS/BNS172/atw100.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=BNS/BNS118/HAB95.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=BNS/BNS152/jof007.jpg

 

[Riprorin]

Any able bodied person can put their hands behind their back.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: kogase

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: BBond
Maybe she was sleeping on her stomach and he snuck in from behind while she was sleeping awakening her (I would imagine) then she would turn at the waist and attempt to push him off with her forearm. That's one scenario.

So she's lying face down and he's on top of her entering her anally and she's pushing him off?

Uh huh.

Jesus, Jesus, you really are grasping at straws here. Do I really have to link a bunch of intraweb pr0n for you before you get it? I dunno how to explain this to you really, because I have no idea what sort of concepts of sexuality run through your mind...

Riprorin only knows about sex because its mentioned in the bible, otherwise, he's asexual.

Well, his French wife, whom he hates along with her family, won't give him any. No wonder he goes for the man-sex and hides behinds his false faith.

 

[aidanjm]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
Any able bodied person can put their hands behind their back.

I.e., any able bodied person could put their hands behind their back to try to push someone (who is on top of them) away. Therefore, the wife's account of events is plausible.

 

[Riprorin]

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: kogase

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: BBond
Maybe she was sleeping on her stomach and he snuck in from behind while she was sleeping awakening her (I would imagine) then she would turn at the waist and attempt to push him off with her forearm. That's one scenario.

So she's lying face down and he's on top of her entering her anally and she's pushing him off?

Uh huh.

Jesus, Jesus, you really are grasping at straws here. Do I really have to link a bunch of intraweb pr0n for you before you get it? I dunno how to explain this to you really, because I have no idea what sort of concepts of sexuality run through your mind...

Riprorin only knows about sex because its mentioned in the bible, otherwise, he's asexual.

Well, his French wife, whom he hates along with her family, won't give him any. No wonder he goes for the man-sex and hides behinds his false faith.

 

[conjur]

People can kick, push with their backside, push with their legs, push with their shoulders, etc.

Rip's just trying to defend this depraved rapist because this sick pervert is part of or at least associated with the bigots and fake Christians at Focus on the Family. And, Rip is the poster boy for bigots and fake Christians.



EDIT: Oh, it was quite on-topic, Rip. Goes to show the background of your bias and fake faith and your bigotry.

 

[Riprorin]

Originally posted by: aidanjm

Originally posted by: Riprorin
Any able bodied person can put their hands behind their back.

I.e., any able bodied person could put their hands behind their back to try to push someone (who is on top of them) away.

Being able to put your hands behind your back and being able to push someone off who's behind or on top of you is two different things.

 

[aidanjm]

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: aidanjm

Originally posted by: Riprorin
Any able bodied person can put their hands behind their back.

I.e., any able bodied person could put their hands behind their back to try to push someone (who is on top of them) away.

Being able to put your hands behind your back and being able to push someone off who's behind or on top of you is two different things.

Well, she said she TRIED to push her husband off. I assume she put her hands behind her back in a desperate effort to push him away, but that she wasn't strong enough to repel him.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: aidanjm

Originally posted by: Riprorin
In either case, I don't see how she could be pushing him off - unless she has arms growing out of her back.

pics of women reaching behind their backs:

http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=GSH/GSH225/GS115022.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=IMG/IMG221/10051014.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=FSP/FSP152/052017.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=BNS/BNS172/atw100.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=BNS/BNS118/HAB95.jpg
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=BNS/BNS152/jof007.jpg

haha! :thumbsup: Guess the ability of women to reach behind their back is not documented in Riprorin's bible.

 

[Riprorin]

Originally posted by: aidanjm

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: aidanjm

Originally posted by: Riprorin
Any able bodied person can put their hands behind their back.

I.e., any able bodied person could put their hands behind their back to try to push someone (who is on top of them) away.

Being able to put your hands behind your back and being able to push someone off who's behind or on top of you is two different things.

Well, she said she TRIED to push her husband off. I assume she put her hands behind her back in a desperate effort to push him away, but that she wasn't strong enough to repel him.

If she wanted to get away from him, I think that that are better ways. Trying to "push" someone that's behind you or on top of you is obviously pretty futile.

Sounds to me like she's making the story up and didn't think through the physics of her statement.

 

[robertcloud]

Wow. I dont post on P&N often, but I've read this topic and my conclusion is that this fellow Riprorin can't be for real. His assertations are simply too blatantly implausable. It is quite obvious he is a complete troll and a discussion can't take place while he is trolling.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the woman alleges these events took place. It also wouldn't be the first time a woman has lied about a former husband.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: robertcloud
Wow. I dont post on P&N often, but I've read this topic and my conclusion is that this fellow Riprorin can't be for real. His assertations are simply too blatantly implausable. It is quite obvious he is a complete troll and a discussion can't take place while he is trolling.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the woman alleges these events took place. It also wouldn't be the first time a woman has lied about a former husband.

Riprorin seems to be arguing for the sake of arguing. That or he truly believes that this guy is without flaw.

 

[Riprorin]

I don't know the guy nor the woman.

I just know that her statement doesn't make any sense.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: robertcloud
Wow. I dont post on P&N often, but I've read this topic and my conclusion is that this fellow Riprorin can't be for real. His assertations are simply too blatantly implausable. It is quite obvious he is a complete troll and a discussion can't take place while he is trolling.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the woman alleges these events took place. It also wouldn't be the first time a woman has lied about a former husband.

Not only that but her story is corroborated by *several* people, both on the record and off.

You have to understand that Rip is one of the worst trolls up here. Logic is lost upon him. He's most likely a closeted homosexual and wears his fake Christianity on his sleeve.

 

[Riprorin]

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: robertcloud
Wow. I dont post on P&N often, but I've read this topic and my conclusion is that this fellow Riprorin can't be for real. His assertations are simply too blatantly implausable. It is quite obvious he is a complete troll and a discussion can't take place while he is trolling.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the woman alleges these events took place. It also wouldn't be the first time a woman has lied about a former husband.

Not only that but her story is corroborated by *several* people, both on the record and off.

You have to understand that Rip is one of the worst trolls up here. Logic is lost upon him. He's most likely a closeted homosexual and wears his fake Christianity on his sleeve.

How were the events "corroborated"? Was someone there during the act?

That would an interesting twist to the story.

 

[aidanjm]

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: robertcloud
Wow. I dont post on P&N often, but I've read this topic and my conclusion is that this fellow Riprorin can't be for real. His assertations are simply too blatantly implausable. It is quite obvious he is a complete troll and a discussion can't take place while he is trolling.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the woman alleges these events took place. It also wouldn't be the first time a woman has lied about a former husband.

Not only that but her story is corroborated by *several* people, both on the record and off.

You have to understand that Rip is one of the worst trolls up here. Logic is lost upon him. He's most likely a closeted homosexual and wears his fake Christianity on his sleeve.

How were the events "corroborated"? Was someone there during the act?

A good form of corroboration would be if she had confided (to a friend or relative or whatever) about what her husband was doing to her, prior to the divorce.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Riprorin

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: robertcloud
Wow. I dont post on P&N often, but I've read this topic and my conclusion is that this fellow Riprorin can't be for real. His assertations are simply too blatantly implausable. It is quite obvious he is a complete troll and a discussion can't take place while he is trolling.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the woman alleges these events took place. It also wouldn't be the first time a woman has lied about a former husband.

Not only that but her story is corroborated by *several* people, both on the record and off.

You have to understand that Rip is one of the worst trolls up here. Logic is lost upon him. He's most likely a closeted homosexual and wears his fake Christianity on his sleeve.

How were the events "corroborated"? Was someone there during the act?

That would an interesting twist to the story.

More proof Rip didn't read the entire article and will go to any lengths to defend this pervert and rapist. He probably admires the guy and probably wants to be a JimmyJeff to him.

 

[Riprorin]

You obviously don't know what "allegation" means.

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Riprorin
You obviously don't know what "allegation" means.

I know what this allegation means. It means that Dr. Hager is a freaking abusive weirdo who should be carefully monitored.