Santorum
Compares Homosexuality to Incest, Polygamy
The
Advocate, April 22, 2003
Gay rights activists are calling on congressional
Republican leadership to take quick action to repudiate remarks U.S. senator
Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, made to the Associated Press
comparing homosexuality to bigamy, incest, and adultery.
Referring to an upcoming decision from the U.S. Supreme
Court on the constitutionality of antigay sodomy laws, Santorum told the
Associated Press, “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 then added, “All of those
things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that’s
sort of where we are in today’s world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I
would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist, in my opinion, in the
United States Constitution.”
Log Cabin Republicans, a gay political group, immediately
condemned Santorum’s comments. “There is nothing conservative about
allowing law enforcement officials to enter the home of any American and
arrest them for simply being gay,” said LCR executive director Patrick
Guerriero. “I am appalled that a member of the United States Senate
leadership would advocate dividing Americans with ugly, hate-filled
rhetoric.”
Santorum is the Republican Party’s conference chairman,
the third-highest seat in the GOP leadership. And as the nonpartisan gay
rights group Human Rights Campaign pointed out in a press release, his remarks
mark the second time in recent months that a Republican leader has made
“comments marginalizing or attacking an entire segment of the population.”
In December then-Senate majority leader Trent Lott made remarks that many
interpreted as supporting segregation. In response to Lott’s comments,
President Bush said, “We must continue our advance toward full equality for
every citizen, which demands the guarantee for civil rights for all.”
“The discriminatory remarks made by Senator Santorum
clearly do not reflect the compassionate conservatism promised by our
president,” said John Partain, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of LCR.
“I thought we were past these types of remarks now that Jesse Helms is no
longer in the Senate.”
“Senator Santorum’s remarks are deeply hurtful and
play on deep-seated fears that fly in the face of scientific evidence, common
sense, and basic decency,” said Winnie Stachelberg, political director of
the Washington, D.C.-based HRC. “Clearly there is no compassion in his
conservatism. Discriminatory remarks like this fuel prejudice that can lead to
violence and other harms against the gay community. HRC is calling on
Republican leaders to take quick and decisive action to repudiate Senator
Santorum’s remarks [and] on Republican leadership to demonstrate that
tolerance and civil rights are important to them—not simply something that
is politically expedient.”
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