Washington ? President Bush’s nominee for surgeon general insisted Thursday that he harbors no bias against homosexuals in spite of his 1991 writings viewed by some as anti-gay.

Dr. James Holsinger faced tough questioning at his Senate confirmation hearing over his views on homosexuality and how he would react if he were pressured to put politics ahead of science in his role as the nation’s doctor.

“I would resign,” Holsinger said emphatically.

Concerns about his independence were spurred by former Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s testimony two days earlier that the Bush administration muzzled him on issues such as abstinence education and stem cell research because of politics. A vote on the nomination of Holsinger, a Kentucky doctor, wasn’t expected for several weeks.

At Thursday’s hearing, he distanced himself from a paper he wrote 16 years ago that has been attacked by gay rights organizations and public health experts as inaccurate and inflammatory. The paper cited data showing elevated rates of disease among gay men, but some medical experts say he completely ignored other data that would contradict the paper’s point that homosexuality is an abnormal function.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, asked Holsinger on several occasions to address aspects of his paper on homosexuality for a study committee of the United Methodist Church.

“Dr. Holsinger’s paper cherry picks and misuses data to support his thesis that homosexuality is unhealthy and unnatural,” said Kennedy, D-Mass.

Holsinger said it was not intended to be a scientific paper and that he relied on the information available to him at the time.

“First of all, the paper does not represent where I am today. It does not represent who I am today,” Holsinger said.

Holsinger emphasized that the data he relied on came from the mid-1980s. He also said it represents a literature search that was done for him through a library.

“The issues that appeared in the review would not even be the major issues in front of our gay and lesbian community today,” he said.