Santorum’s
Insensitive Words Indicate the Heart of the Issue
Philadelphia
Inquirer, April 23, 2003
P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, PA 19101
Fax: 215-854-4483
Email: Inquirer.opinion@phillynews.com
By Nathaniel Frank
Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) has pulled a Trent Lott,
revealing his true colors with a stunningly insensitive public comment.
This month, he told the Associated Press that “if the
Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your
home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you
have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right
to anything.”
Many Americans are so offended by Santorum’s comparison
of homosexuality to adultery and incest that they denounce his comments
without rebutting his logic.
“We’re urging the Republican leadership to condemn
the remarks,” said a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, the
nation’s largest gay advocacy organization. “We would ask that the
leadership reconsider his standing within the conference leadership.”
The Philadelphia chapter of Log Cabin Republicans, a
Republican gay-rights group, said Santorum’s “remarks certainly do not
reflect the tone of compassionate conservatism espoused by President Bush.”
This response—condemning his words and ignoring his
logic—threatens to bury the conversation, just as homosexuality itself is
too often buried. Why not use reason to dismantle his transparent political
ruse? Why not explain precisely why consensual sex between two men or between
two women is different from—indeed, better than—incest or adultery?
Santorum, an outspoken moralist on social issues such as
abortion and gay rights, is clearly pandering to a far right-wing political
base, and appealing to the worst fears of moral decline among American
conservatives. Perhaps he should be removed from the Senate leadership, having
revealed what is clearly bigotry no matter how you slice it.
But in reality, Santorum, whose spokesperson has insisted
that the senator “has no problem with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender
individuals,” was not flatly conflating homosexuality with adultery and
incest. He was employing the famous “slippery slope” tactic to argue,
incorrectly, that removing a ban on one kind of private, consensual behavior
will deprive society of any reason to ban other kinds of private, consensual
behavior.
This is where those who believe in reason must speak up.
Santorum’s bigoted and insensitive remarks invite fair-minded people to
engage in a conversation about how society might regulate some forms of
behavior while permitting other forms—and why.
Incest, bigamy, polygamy and adultery can, like
homosexuality, be consensual. But society has good reason to ban sex between
family members and even between married people and their nonspousal partners.
Bigamy, polygamy and adultery are undesirable for reasons easy to make clear.
The purpose of marriage—from society’s standpoint—is to tie as many
people as possible into stable relationships: That provides the best
environment for raising children, softens and domesticates otherwise restless
individuals, and provides people with “caretakers of first resort” without
burdening taxpayers when people require assistance with age, sickness,
depression or disability. A “marriage” that weds one man to numerous women
or one woman to numerous men invites increased jealousy, deception and
subjugation, magnifies struggles for power, and mocks the stabilizing function
of the institution.
Beyond the possibility of producing impaired children,
permitting incest strikes at the trust and care that families require. Imagine
a society in which parents and children viewed each other as potential sexual
partners, or even where siblings did. Incestual marriages would legitimize
sexual predation within families.
Americans these days are often reluctant to judge some
private behavior as more desirable than others, but such judgment is a
necessary component of a democratic discourse on how to achieve true freedom
for the largest number of people. After all, drug use, prostitution, and tax
evasion can all be practiced privately in the bedroom, but only ardent
libertarians tend to oppose bans on all three. Some private behavior should be
regulated. The question is which ones and why?
I have always sought in vain to understand whom
homosexuality hurts. Vague references to immorality do not persuade because,
on examination, they always turn out to be sloppy stand-ins for one group’s
religious taboos. Santorum should be called to explain, not why he thinks gay
sex is wrong, but exactly why he thinks sex between two consenting adult men
or women should remain a crime. Criminalizing homosexuality only to justify
the criminalization of other taboos, whose consequences really are damaging,
reveals the bankruptcy of Santorum’s thinking. That’s what needs
condemnation and correction, not just his insensitive public remarks.
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