CALL ME CRAZY, but this guy sounds like a bad pick:

The Bush administration has chosen Jerry Thacker, a Pennsylvania marketing consultant who has characterized AIDS as the “gay plague,” to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS. . . .

In his speeches and writings on his Web site and elsewhere, Thacker has described homosexuality as a “deathstyle” rather than a lifestyle and asserted that “Christ can rescue the homosexual.” After word of his selection spread among gays in recent days, some material disappeared from the Web site. Earlier versions located by The Washington Post that referred to the “gay plague,” for instance, were changed as of yesterday to “plague.”

I don’t know this guy, and I suppose it’s conceivable that this is a bit of outrageous character assassination — but there’s a notable absence of Administration voices saying that’s the case. Instead, the spin seems to be that Thacker is HIV-positive and that his appointment furthers diversity on the Commission. Well, it certainly does that. But I thought this Administration was against diversity for diversity’s sake, and it’s not clear to me just what else Thacker brings to the table.

UPDATE: Justin Katz says I am crazy! Well, not really. What he says is that although he’s “ambivalent” about Thacker’s appointment, he thinks that ideological diversity is important, and that having Thacker as one member of a large commission promotes that without doing any real harm.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reportedly, Thacker is withdrawing.