Statement
by Howard Dean on Senator Santorum’s Offensive Remarks
Dean
for America, April 22, 2003
For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Courtney O’Donnell
Email: codonnell@deanforamerica.com
Phone: 802-846-6600
In an interview published yesterday with the Associated
Press, Senator Rick Santorum, the third highest ranking Republican in the
Senate, compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. I am
outraged by Senator Santorum’s remarks.
That a leader of the Republican Party would make such
insensitive and divisive comments—comments that are derogatory and meant to
harm an entire group of Americans, their friends and their families—is not
only outrageous, but deeply offensive.
The silence with which President Bush and the Republican
Party leadership have greeted Senator Santorum’s remarks is deafening. It is
the same silence that greeted Senator Lott’s offensive remarks in December.
It is a silence that implicitly condones a policy of domestic divisiveness, a
policy that seeks to divide Americans again and again on the basis of race,
gender, class, and sexual orientation.
It is a policy that must end, and it is a policy that
will end with a Dean Presidency.
This Saturday, April 26th, marks the third anniversary of
the signing of the Civil Unions bill in Vermont. I signed that bill because I
believe no human being should be treated with less dignity than others simply
because that person belongs to a different category or group. I also believe
that, as Americans, it is our duty to speak up when others are treated
wrongly—especially when others are treated wrongly by a member of the Senate
leadership.
I urge all Americans, and members of both parties, to
join me in condemning Senator Santorum’s remarks. They are unacceptable, and
silence is an unacceptable response. By standing up against such divisive
rhetoric—whether one is gay, lesbian, or straight-we can begin to achieve
the American ideal of equal rights for all people.
-Howard Dean
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