GOP
Leaders Shrug Off Senator’s Remarks on Gay Sex
Unlike the Trent Lott racial segregation flap, which
led to a change in the Senate leadership, Santorum’s statements draw little
outrage.
Los
Angeles Times, April 24, 2003
Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053
Fax: 213-237-7679 or 213-237-5319
Email: letters@latimes.com
By Nick Anderson, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON—Critics are hearing
echoes of the Trent Lott furor this week in Sen. Rick Santorum’s comments
that linked gay consensual sex with bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.
To which some prominent Republicans who have read
Santorum’s words reply, in essence: What controversy?
Lott, a Mississippi Republican, was forced to step down
as Senate Republican leader in December after he praised the 1948 presidential
candidacy of Strom Thurmond, whose campaign advocated racial segregation. His
comments, at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, drew the wrath of President
Bush and GOP senators—despite Lott’s many apologies.
But Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican and a rising star
in his party, has not been criticized by GOP leaders for his views on the
legal and moral issues surrounding homosexuality. The White House has been
largely silent.
Far from apologetic, Santorum has stood by his remarks,
shrugging off calls from gay-rights advocates, some Democrats and other
critics for him to quit the chairmanship of the Senate Republican Conference.
A few Republicans are criticizing the party’s
third-ranking senator. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) said Wednesday that
Santorum’s comments had hurt the party.
“It’s divisive language,” Chafee said, “and I
don’t think that’s constructive.” The Log Cabin Republicans, an
organization of Republican gays and lesbians, also sharply denounced
Santorum’s statements.
But such opinions were not dominant within the GOP.
What distinguishes Santorum’s case from Lott’s is
that a core group of Republicans appears to have no quarrel with what the
Pennsylvanian said.
Prominent conservative organizations such as the Family
Research Council and the Free Congress Foundation, among others, have risen to
Santorum’s defense. Some even want him to expand on his views.
“In the way that Trent Lott crossed a certain line on
race, I don’t know that he [Santorum] crossed that line” with the GOP
leadership, said Michael Berkman, a political scientist at Pennsylvania State
University. “This is how many of them feel.”
In an April 7 interview with Associated Press that was
published this week, Santorum said: “I have no problem with homosexuality. I
have a problem with homosexual acts.”
Discussing a Texas sodomy law under legal challenge
before the U.S. Supreme Court, Santorum argued that the Constitution does not
grant a right to privacy.
“And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right
to [gay] consensual sex within your home,” Santorum said, “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.”
Of polygamy, adultery and sodomy, he continued, “All of
those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.”
And, he added, “that’s not to pick on homosexuality.
It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may
be.”
In response to critics who called his remarks polarizing
and discriminatory, Santorum insisted that his comments came in the context of
the case before the Supreme Court, Lawrence vs. Texas. He stressed that he
believed in equality for all Americans and said that his statement should not
be “misconstrued” as a comment on “individual lifestyles.”
Santorum, 44, a two-term senator who has expressed
ambition to climb higher in the party, issued no further public statement on
the matter Wednesday. A Roman Catholic, he is known as one of the Senate’s
staunchest opponents of abortion and is a frequently outspoken advocate of
Christian conservative views on social issues.
Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, declined
Wednesday to weigh in on the matter. “The president typically never does
comment on anything involving a Supreme Court case, a Supreme Court ruling or
a Supreme Court finding—typically,” he said.
In a prepared statement released late Tuesday, Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said: “Rick is a consistent voice for
inclusion and compassion in the Republican Party and in the Senate, and to
suggest otherwise is just politics.”
The assessments from Fleischer and Frist offered a sharp
contrast to the controversy over Lott’s remarks. Fleischer, following
Bush’s lead, criticized Lott’s comments praising Thurmond, who recently
retired from the Senate. Frist was a leader in the insurrection that toppled
Lott.
Santorum briefly challenged Frist for the majority
leader’s post after Lott resigned, but fell in line behind him.
Santorum’s remarks drew condemnation and remorse from
gay Republicans. Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin
Republicans, said he had met with Santorum on such issues as Bush’s
legislative initiative to fight HIV and AIDS.
“We’ve actually had a strong working relationship
with Rick Santorum and his office, which makes this issue all the more
disappointing,” Guerriero said. But Santorum’s views, though sharply
expressed, are not much different from those of some conservative legal
advocates who have discussed the Texas sodomy case.
In a brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold the state
law, Alabama Atty. Gen. William H. Pryor argued that enshrining a
constitutional right that would protect gay sex “must logically extend to
activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of
child pornography and even incest and pedophilia.” Bush recently nominated
Pryor to be a federal appellate judge.
Another lawyer who has filed a brief backing the Texas
law said Santorum had merely represented the views of many conservative legal
advocates.
“In many ways I think he should be commended for
speaking forthrightly on this issue,” said Herbert W. Titus, a Virginia
attorney. “I think it’s a very crucial issue.”
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