A
‘Voice for Inclusion’
Washington
Post, April 24, 2003
1150 15th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20071
Email: letterstoed@washpost.com
By Richard Cohen
I come from a long line of Talmudic scholars—actually,
just one, and he wasn’t much of a scholar—but still my eyes cross and my
head aches when I try to decipher the sage words of Sen. Rick Santorum about
homosexuality. He has “no problem with homosexuality,” he said in a recent
interview, but he has “a problem with homosexual acts.” You can see my
problem.
For some reason—who can explain these things?—Santorum’s
remarks were viewed by some as anti-gay and he was asked to resign from the
Senate’s Republican leadership, where his GOP colleagues, in recognition of
his great intellectual gifts, have made him chairman of the Senate Republican
Conference. So far, though, he is sticking to his guns—whatever they may be.
Santorum expounded on homosexuality in a recent interview
with the Associated Press. He raised the topic himself when he mentioned a
pending Supreme Court case about Texas’s sodomy law, which prohibits
you-know-what, and envisioned what would happen if the law was inexplicably
overturned:
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to
consensual 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.”
Santorum later said his remarks “should not be
misconstrued in any way as a statement on individual lifestyles.” I
wouldn’t dare.
Not to be picky, but when Santorum likens homosexuality
to, say, incest, he is conjuring up an offense in which there often is a
victim—commonly a child. That is not the same as consensual sex between
adults, which, some maintain, ought to be the business of no one else,
particularly the government.
As for adultery, another of the hideous possibilities
Santorum mentioned, it is already not a crime in most of the country—and not
much of a crime anywhere else. As this is being written, my crack research
staff is trying to find the last time the cops raided anyone’s home for
adultery. One of them cynically suggested the police would have far less work
if they raided homes on suspicion of fidelity.
Of course, the usual gay and liberal groups denounced
Santorum, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee came to his
defense with alacrity. He pointed out that Santorum “is a consistent voice
for inclusion and compassion in the Republican Party and in the Senate and to
suggest otherwise is just plain politics.” The eloquence of that rebuttal
helps explain why some observers detect a touch of Churchill in the Tennessean.
Still, some may quibble and niggle by suggesting that
being “a voice for inclusion and compassion in the Republican Party” is a
pretty low bar. These cynics should be dismissed out of hand as “elites.”
As luck would have it, Gary Bauer, the illustrious former GOP presidential
candidate, used precisely that word—“elites”—to characterize
Santorum’s critics. He added that Santorum’s remarks “were pretty much
in the mainstream of where most of the country is”—a redundancy, but well
worth it.
The elites, of course, compared Santorum’s remarks on
homosexuality with Trent Lott’s on racial segregation and his apparent
nostalgia for the good ol’ days of dual water fountains, school systems and
state parks and the occasional, but regrettable, lynching. In fact, there is
no comparison. The GOP is seeking the black vote, but homosexuals remain
reviled among the mainstream of conservative theologians who are dear to the
heart of the Republican Party. These are the people who cannot decide which is
more evil—Islam or homosexuality. It is a dilemma that I look to Franklin
Graham to solve.
As is always the case—these people are so
predictable—some elite columnist is going to point out that homosexuals are
often the victim of hate crimes, even murder, and that Santorum has, in his
modest way, provided the haters with a rationale.
In 2001, 1,393 hate crimes were committed against gay and
bisexual Americans—14.3 percent of total hate crimes. This was clearly a
spontaneous effort on the part of some non-elites to contain matters
before—as night follows day—incest, polygamy and foot fetishism are made
legal, maybe even compulsory, throughout this great country of ours and even
taught in our godless public schools.
Deconstructing Santorum is no easy matter. His logic is
Euclidean, his analogies Limbaughian, and he has, I must add, a stern
countenance that in no way bespeaks the resolute voice for inclusion he really
is. But he does, I think, raise a profound question that he ought to answer
himself: If you have the orientation of a moron, do you still have to talk
like one?
Who’s Offensive
Denver
Post, May 5, 2003
1560 Broadway, Denver, CO 80202
Fax: 303-820-1369
Email: Letters@denverpost.com
Letters
Re: “Should Santorum be pilloried for his sodomy
remarks? YES: His comments were moronic,” April 24 news story.
I suspect columnist Richard Cohen does not want to lose
his job over offensive remarks, yet he wants Sen. Santorum to lose his. He
obviously has a double standard. The Post repeated Cohen’s affront to
individuals with mental challenges by calling Santorum’s comments
“moronic” in the headline; Cohen himself offended by asking, “If you
have the orientation of a moron, do you still have to talk like one?”
Making light of the difficulties some low-IQ individuals
have with speech, and linking to them the ill-considered remarks of the
senator, is far more blatantly hurtful and offensive than the muddled thoughts
of Sen. Santorum. Does Mr. Cohen think he should be spared sanction because he
is more clear in his bigotry?
—Robert Haywood, Evergreen
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