Gay
Groups Urge GOP to Remove Santorum
Associated Press, April 21,
2003
By Lara Jakes Jordan
WASHINGTON—Gay-rights groups,
fuming over Sen. Rick Santorum’s comparison of homosexuality to bigamy,
polygamy, incest and adultery, urged Republican leaders Monday to consider
removing the Pennsylvania lawmaker from the GOP Senate leadership.
A coalition of groups in Washington and Pennsylvania
compared Santorum’s remarks to those by those last December by former Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott about Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist
campaign for the presidency. Shortly afterward, Lott was forced to resign as
Republican Senate leader.
Santorum is chairman of the GOP conference in the Senate,
third in his party’s leadership, behind Majority Leader Bill Frist of
Tennessee and Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
“We’re urging the Republican leadership to condemn
the remarks. They were stunning in their insensitivity, and they’re the same
types of remarks that sparked outrage toward Sen. Lott,” said David Smith, a
spokesman 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.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Santorum
criticized homosexuality while discussing a pending Supreme Court case over a
Texas sodomy law.
“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, R-Pa., said in the
interview, published Monday.
Santorum spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said the
lawmaker’s comments were “were specific to the Supreme Court case.”
The White House did not immediately return a call seeking
comment, and a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Frist declined comment.
Lott resigned his post in December after making remarks
at a 100th birthday celebration for Thurmond that were widely considered
racially insensitive and condemned by the White House. Lott later apologized.
Among the groups condemning Santorum’s remarks were the
Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, the Pennsylvania Log Cabin
Republicans, OutFront, and the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition.
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