Rick
Will Survive This
Nothing has emerged about him that voters didn’t
already know
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, April 25, 2003
Box 947, Pittsburgh, PA 15230
Fax: 412-263-2014
Email: letters@post-gazette.com
By Jon Delano
Every politician says things they wish they hadn’t.
Just ask Trent Lott. This week, Rick Santorum probably wishes he had picked
his words a little more carefully.
But, in the end, watch for Santorum to emerge with his
job intact as the Republican Party’s conference chair. This state’s junior
senator has had a charmed political life, and while the national outcry
surprised even him, nothing new has emerged about him that we in Pennsylvania
didn’t already know.
First, my disclaimer. I like Rick Santorum’s energy, I
like Rick’s usually good political acumen, and I like Rick’s political
growth over the last decade. I’ve known Rick since he was a young, single
lawyer who moved into my neighborhood and handed out Republican brochures at
the local school where we vote.
Second, back in another lifetime, I was chief of staff to
the congressman that Rick narrowly defeated. But I never take politics
personally, and as Rick has joked with me, that election launched me on
another interesting (and, yes, more lucrative) career back in the private
sector more than a dozen years ago.
Third, when it comes to public policy, I agree with Rick
on some things, and I disagree on others. OK, that’s not really a
disclaimer. As a flaming moderate, I say that about most politicians. But, in
my view, Santorum’s views on privacy in the bedroom are beyond the
mainstream of American beliefs. In an interview, Santorum opined about a Texas
statute that criminalizes homosexual conduct between consenting adults in the
privacy of their own home. Most states like Pennsylvania have repealed such
laws, but Texas still takes an interest in what consenting adults do in the
bedroom. The statute is under attack in the Supreme Court, and Santorum wants
the court to affirm the right of every state to legislate in this arena.
“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,” Santorum said.
He then claimed, “It all comes from, I would argue,
this right to privacy that doesn’t exist, in my opinion, in the United
States Constitution.”
Gay rights groups denounced Santorum for equating gay sex
with incest, and, as a lawyer, I do think Santorum was making a bit of a
logical leap. If the Supreme Court rules that consensual gay sex is a
protected privacy right, it hardly seems necessary for the court to strike
down laws against polygamy, bigamy or anything else. There are lots of
compelling public policy reasons, like the children involved, to outlaw
polygamy that hardly relate to what consenting adults do in private.
But the larger issue, missed by many, is Santorum’s
unorthodox view on the right to privacy, a right that most Americans take for
granted. Santorum is correct that the Constitution does not explicitly use the
word privacy. But it’s been 40 years since the Supreme Court found that
right implicit in the document. The court struck down a Connecticut statute
that prohibited doctors from prescribing contraceptives like the pill,
declaring that some things are really so personal as to be beyond government
intervention.
What really bothers Santorum, I suspect, is that the
right to privacy has been used in subsequent cases to affirm things he
doesn’t like, particularly the right of a woman to choose an abortion. In
response to the furor, Santorum relies on a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 1985
upholding a Georgia anti-sodomy law. Legal scholars say there is a difference
between Georgia’s law that covers all citizens and the Texas statute aimed
only at gays. But Santorum’s defense of Texas with his sweeping claim that
we have no constitutional privacy rights cuts against mainstream legal views.
Moreover, it’s questionable politics and subjects
Santorum to ridicule. Americans believe in a right of privacy, and, in
particular, the sanctity of the bedroom. Santorum may not like gay sex or
“nontraditional” heterosexual sex, another position he takes, but only a
few Americans think that such private personal conduct should be outlawed.
The question for Republicans is should a man with such
views on sex and privacy be the third-ranking leader in the Republican Party
of the U.S. Senate?
Forget the outcry from gays and Democrats. While gays
have a right to criticize, they simply do not carry the political weight that
civil rights groups do when it comes to Republican Party politics. As for
Democrats, they just smell a political opportunity and will make the most of
it.
My bet is on Santorum surviving all this. Sure he’ll
get dusted up on the talk shows, but in some ways it just reinforces what
everyone knows about him: He is a very conservative fellow. Nothing new there.
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