Dean
Calls for Santorum to Resign Post
Associated Press, April 23,
2003
WASHINGTON—Democratic
presidential candidate Howard Dean on Wednesday called for Republican Sen.
Rick Santorum to resign his leadership post after the lawmaker compared
homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.
“Gay-bashing is not a legitimate public policy
discussion; it is immoral. Rick Santorum’s failure to recognize that
attacking people because of who they are is morally wrong makes him unfit for
a leadership position in the United States Senate,” Dean said in a
statement.
Santorum, Pennsylvania’s junior senator, is No. 3 in
the GOP leadership, serving as the Republican Party’s conference chairman.
On Tuesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also called for
Santorum to step down as conference chairman; gay-rights groups and several
Democrats have criticized the lawmaker for his comments.
As governor of Vermont, Dean signed legislation that
allowed gay couples to enter into civil unions.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania
Wednesday, Santorum defended his comments and said they were similar to what
Justice Byron White wrote in the 1986 Supreme Court ruling that consenting
adults have no constitutional right to private homosexual sex.
“To suggest that my comments, which are the law of the
land and were the reason the Supreme Court decided the case in 1986, are
somehow intolerant, I would just argue that it is not,” Santorum said.
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