Santorum’s
Stumble
Washington
Post, April 23, 2003
1150 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20071
Email: letterstoed@washpost.com
Media Notes
By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post Staff Writer
At least Trent Lott had the good sense to apologize.
Rick Santorum doesn’t seem to grasp why people are
upset by his corrosive comments about gays.
Is it still acceptable, in 2003, to depict gays as some
kind of strange, deviant group, as weird as those who have sex with relatives?
We’re about to find out.
Santorum, by the way, is not just a senator from
Pennsylvania; he’s the third-ranking member of the Republican leadership.
The media, once again, seem to be a bit slow. We
couldn’t find the Santorum story in yesterday’s USA Today. The New York
Times ran a wire story on the bottom of page A21 in some editions. The
Washington Post had a short, staff-written story on the bottom of Page A4; the
Los Angeles Times had a wire story on Page A13 of the national edition.
What did Santorum say? Let’s start with yesterday’s
Philadelphia Inquirer report:
“Outraged gay-rights groups called on Senate
Republicans to consider removing Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) from his leadership
post after comments in which he compared gay sex to incest.
“The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay
advocacy group, and several Pennsylvania-based gay-rights organizations said
Santorum’s remarks, concerning a challenge to a Texas sodomy law under
review by the Supreme Court, were an affront to millions of Americans.
“‘It is stunning, stunning in its insensitivity,’
said David Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. ‘Putting
homosexuality on the same moral plane as incest is repulsive.’
“Smith was reacting to a recent interview in which
Santorum was quoted as criticizing legal initiatives to overturn the 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 said in the
interview with the Associated Press.
“Santorum spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said
yesterday that Santorum had no problem with gay relationships. ‘Sen.
Santorum was specifically speaking about the right to privacy within the
context of the Supreme Court case,’ she said, explaining that he did not
want to elevate gay sex to the level of a constitutional right.”
That explanation, to put it politely, is rather tangled.
Santorum has “no problem” with gays—some of his
best friends, etc.—but believes they have no constitutional right to engage
in consensual activity, the way that heterosexuals do?
In other words, he has no problem with gays except for
the sexual behavior they engage in. He thinks it should be illegal.
He would no more grant gays legal protection for
consensual sex than he would those who engage in incest.
Keep in mind, this isn’t one of those tricky
public-policy conundrums—like gays in the military or gays in the Boy Scouts
or whether gays should be protected against workplace discrimination—that
involve other people and institutions. It’s about what gay people do in the
privacy of their home.
Is this George Bush’s vision of compassionate
conservatism (or Dick Cheney’s for that matter, since he has a daughter
who’s a lesbian)?
No knuckle-rapping from the White House, at least not
yet. Ari Fleischer ducked the question yesterday, saying he hadn’t seen the
interview and hadn’t discussed the matter with Bush.
How can Lott talking about a segregationist candidate in
‘48 be more offensive than Santorum disrespecting gays in ‘03?
The New York Times casts the Santorum spat as something
of a GOP problem:
“In the long and conflicted history between gays and
Republicans, Senator Rick Santorum—caught in a storm over his remarks
equating homosexuality with polygamy and incest—is writing a new chapter.
“Eight years ago, Dick Armey, then the House majority
leader, referred to Representative Barney Frank, the prominent gay lawmaker,
as Barney Fag. Three years later, Senator Trent Lott infuriated gays when he
likened them to kleptomaniacs.
“Now it is Mr. Santorum, of Pennsylvania, who is being
accused of having a tin ear—or worse.”
Here’s the AP follow-up in this morning’s Inquirer:
“Rick Santorum, the Senate’s third-ranked Republican
who is under fire from gay-rights groups and Democrats, says he has ‘no
problem with homosexuality—I have a problem with homosexual acts.’”
Boy, that oughta make everyone feel better. Kind of like
saying you have no problem with disabled folks, it’s just those blasted
wheelchairs.
“In an interview on the Fox News Channel, Santorum did
not back down. ‘I do not need to give an apology based on what I said and
what I am saying now,’ he said. ‘I think it is a legitimate public-policy
discussion.’
“Conservative Republicans, including former
presidential candidate Gary Bauer, rallied to Santorum’s defense.”
The Chicago Tribune has more reaction:
“William Donohue, president of the Catholic League,
said that such comparisons are ‘disingenuous’ and that the comments
accurately reflect ‘the Christian understanding of marriage.’
“Former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer
also came to Santorum’s defense. ‘I think that while some elites may be
upset by those comments, they’re pretty much in the mainstream of where most
of the country is.’
“However, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee,
which is charged with electing Democrats to the Senate, called on Santorum to
resign as the Republican Party’s conference chairman, the third-highest
ranking position in the GOP Senate leadership.”
In Salon, Andrew Sullivan finds the senator’s legal
theory chilling:
“Santorum’s position is therefore that there should
be no constitutional restraint on the power of government to regulate sexual
morality—even within your own bedroom. The only restraint—especially
against any sexual minorities—would be mandated by majority decisions. . . .
“What Santorum is proposing is far more radical. It is
not simply that we should have public standards for morality, but that this
can and should be imposed even on people in their private homes. He would not
simply assert a social norm; he would enforce it with the power of the state.
. . .
“Notice one other thing. Santorum also believes it
should be legitimate for the government to police adultery.”
Um, what about that constituency? Don’t they vote?
“We now know where Santorum stands. But what about his
party?” . . . [other topics]
[Home] [News] [Lawrence
v. Texas] [Santorum] [Spreading
Santorum]
