Sex,
Sense, Silliness and Santorum
The
Phoenix, April 23, 2003
By Eric Campbell, ecampbell@phoenixvillenews.com
My finest hour as a smarmy liberal came during my senior
year at Downingtown High School. Junior senator Rick Santorum visited our
auditorium and spoke of the opportunities of the future. Unfortunately for
him, a few kids took advantage of present opportunities in the
question-and-answer session that followed. Students—who, unlike reporters,
can assail authority figures without fear of alienating them—hammered
Santorum with tough questions on abortion, the environment, welfare. He became
visibly frustrated, as he repeatedly insisted that this issue or that issue
should be the domain of local government, not the federal government. Then he
called on me, and I suppressed my better judgment; I wanted Santorum to bare
his fangs, to lose his composure in front of 17-year-olds.
“Mr. Santorum,” I said (it went something like this),
“if you don’t do this and you don’t do that, maybe you could tell us
exactly what it is you do.”
He didn’t bare his fangs. He didn’t flash his claws.
But mine was the last question. He bristled, said something about how “this
isn’t what I came here for,” and was quickly out the door.
A friend told me off while we filed back to class. “You
knew what he meant; you knew what you were doing. You know better,” he said.
He was right. I knew Santorum wasn’t going to change
his ways just because I mocked him. I knew better.
Today, after Santorum’s ludicrous comments about
homosexuality, the question is: Does he?
“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.”
He insists his argument is about jurisdiction, about his
fear that people who practice those other acts will come before the Supreme
Court and demand their vices legalized. But that’s not Santorum’s concern;
he knows as well as I do that American support for bigamists, cheats and the
incestuous is razor-thin. Those acts are nowhere close to becoming legal.
Santorum fears them as much as he fears consensual sodomy.
Santorum says he doesn’t mind homosexuals, he just
doesn’t like homosexual sex. He doesn’t think gays should act on their
feelings.
So if not everyone can have the decency to think like
Santorum, they should at least act like they do.
And if they flout his sensible directives, well, that’s
when he intervenes. That’s the answer to my question. What exactly does
Santorum do? He gets involved when someone does something he doesn’t like.
Take a slide down that slippery slope, Senator, and see how long the
Constitution tolerates it.
“The basic liberal philosophy is materialistic, is
relativistic, to the point of, you’ve got candidates for president saying we
should condone different types of marriage,” Santorum said. “That is, to
me, the death knell of the American family.”
I can’t be sure, but I think I just heard the death
knell of common sense.
The truth is, there’s no meat to this whole issue of
sodomy and legalization and the consequences. Gay Americans will continue to
have sex whether it is legal or not, and whether Rick Santorum chastises them
or not. Rick Santorum will always spout off from some podium, whether he’s
senator, Senate majority leader, President of the United States or president
of the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo. The important result of this current
hoopla will be: Will Santorum’s opinions become more influential or less?
As robust as it is these days, the Republican juggernaut
cannot sustain a head-on collision with a group as angry and politically
visible as gays. If George W. Bush and Bill Frist have a whit of sense,
they’ll boot Rick Santorum off at the next station. If they want to be the
party of inclusion and embrace the moderates who are disappointed with
Democrats, they should take note: Fewer sweeping statements of intolerance
that offend millions of Americans, more plates of chocolate chip cookies.
In the meantime, there’s no strong Democrat to hold the
Republicans responsible for not dismissing Santorum’s views out of hand. The
aforementioned candidates for president will each chime in, to be sure, but
there is every reason to expect each chime to sound like the same tune:
outraged, but impotent.
What’s needed is an attack-dog candidate who derides
Santorum precisely and memorably, and who—more importantly—makes it clear
his administration’s agenda would frustrate and disgust Santorum. A
half-hearted defense will leave gays wondering where to turn for
representation, or leave them convinced a third-party vote is their best
recourse.
Make no mistake: The Democrats are under more pressure to
respond than the Republicans. They need to gain fathoms of ground.
And Trent Lott needs a golfing partner.
Jolene Fischer, April 25, 2003
Eric Campbell’s attempting to exploit Rick Santorum’s
bigotry as a way to insult and demean democratic candidates smacks the
hypocritical third party whitewash we’ve had thrown at us since the election
cycle of 2000. If you want to talk about a lack of cojones.. let’s discuss
the moral responsibility for the mindset that rationalized imposing Bush and
right wing control on all of us of the Nader-reich, they lied about Al Gore,
accusing him of one untruth after another, yet defend Nader’s more than 8
million dollars of investments in corporations greens claim to consider dirty
corporate crooks. I’m fed up with the Eric Campbells’ and their moral
relativism.
J Holt, April 24, 2003
It was reported in newspapers last year that Senator
Santorum played a very active role in the decisions by the Pennsylvania
legislature regarding congressional reapportionmnent. This was a process where
the Republican-majority Pennsylvania legislature redrew boundaries of
congressional districts for strictly political reasons to limit voters’
choices and cause the elimination of four seats held by Democrats. Since
Santorum is obviously involved in state politics and decision-making, are his
remarks in favor of the Texas anti-gay sodomy law the opening salvo in a
campaign to have the Pennsylvania legislature pass a similar law? If this is
so, will Santorum’s next step be to ensure that such a law is strictly
enforced in Pennsylvania? Does this mean that Santorum supports raids in the
middle of the night on the residences of gays and lesbians in Pennsylvania
with suspects being dragged off to prison? Does Santorum support placing such
suspects under surveillance? What is the purpose of fighting to preserve
sodomy laws if they are not enforced? Thinking residents of Pennsylvania
should be very concerned about what Santorum has said. Remember, he is a
top-ranking official in the Republican Party and evidently wields considerable
influence in Pennsylvania politics. Governor Rendell, The only statewide
Democratic official, has had the courage to condemn Santorum’s remarks and
would most likely veto any discriminatory bills passed by the Republican
legislature. In this time where Americans should be united against the common
enemy of freedom, terrorists, Santorum is issuing divisive and hurtful remarks
against fellow Americans.
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