Frist
and Specter Defend Santorum
Remarks on Gays Should Not Be Misconstrued, Leaders
Say
Washington
Post, April 24, 2003
1150 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20071
Email: letterstoed@washpost.com
By Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) defended Sen.
Rick Santorum yesterday as a “voice for inclusion and compassion” while
the White House remained silent on the Pennsylvania Republican’s remarks
about homosexuality.
Frist and Pennsylvania’s senior Republican senator,
Arlen Specter, rallied to Santorum’s side after all of the leading
Democratic presidential contenders and congressional leaders condemned him for
comparing gay sex to incest, bigamy and polygamy in an interview published
Monday by the Associated Press.
“Rick is a consistent voice for inclusion and
compassion in the Republican Party and in the Senate, and to suggest otherwise
is just politics,” Frist said in a statement.
Specter said he accepted Santorum’s assurance that the
remarks “should not be misconstrued in any way as a statement on individual
lifestyles.”
“I have known Rick Santorum for the better part of two
decades, and I can say with certainty he is not a bigot,” Specter said.
Some Democrats and gay-rights groups maintained that
Santorum has a history of hostility to legal equality for gays and should step
down as chairman of the Republican Conference, the GOP’s No. 3 Senate post.
In the full AP interview, Santorum included gay sex in the category of
“deviant” behavior that threatens to “undermine the basic tenets of our
society and the family.”
The remarks that first stirred controversy Monday were
about a pending Supreme Court case, Lawrence v. Texas, challenging the
constitutionality of a Texas statute against homosexual sodomy.
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to
consensual 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 told the AP.
After the senator complained Tuesday that the quote had
been taken out of context, the AP released the full text of the interview,
which included a discussion of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church
and a question about his view of homosexuality.
“I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem
with homosexual acts,” he said. “. . . . If that’s their orientation,
then I accept that. . . . The question is, do you act upon those orientations?
So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions.”
Santorum said again yesterday at a meeting with
constituents in Williamsport, Pa., that his remarks were “reflective of,
clearly, the Supreme Court precedent, and nothing more.” The question came
from a 23-year-old student who identified himself as a “proud gay
Pennsylvanian” and asked, “How can you compare my sexuality and what I do
in the privacy of my home to bigamy or incest?”
Santorum replied that he was simply restating the
argument made by Supreme Court Justice Byron White in upholding a Georgia
sodomy law in 1986. “Justice White said virtually the same thing that I
said, that if . . . you tell the states that they cannot regulate in this area
. . . then you leave open the door for a variety of other sexual activities to
occur within the home and not be regulated.”
At the White House, meanwhile, press secretary Ari
Fleischer said President Bush would not comment on Santorum’s remarks,
because “the president typically never does comment on anything involving a
Supreme Court case.”
When a reporter pointed out that Bush recently weighed in
on a Michigan affirmative action case before the court, Fleischer said that
was why he had used the word “typically.”
Throughout the day, Democrats contended that the White
House was trying to avoid taking a position that would alienate gays or
conservatives from the GOP. Republicans contended that the Democrats were
hoping for a repeat of the furor over Sen. Trent Lott in December that began
when the Mississippi Republican praised Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist
presidential campaign and ended with Lott’s resignation as Senate majority
leader.
“As additional reports have come to light, revealing a
disturbing history of inflammatory, anti-gay rhetoric by Senator Santorum, the
deafening silence of President Bush and his party has become inexcusable,”
said Howard Dean, the Democratic presidential candidate who signed a bill
allowing same-sex unions when he was governor of Vermont.
Ken Connor, president of the conservative Family Research
Council, complained in an e-mail to supporters that the defense of Santorum
was weak. He said Fleischer “ducked three questions about the affair,”
while Frist and Specter “issued statements offering personal assurances that
Sen. Santorum is not a bigot, but conspicuously avoided the real issue.
“It is clear that many top GOP leaders cannot bring
themselves to offer a spirited defense of marriage for fear of being accused
of bigotry by Democrats and their allies among homosexual activists,” he
wrote.
The position expressed by Santorum, a devout Catholic,
has religious roots, said Chester Gillis, chairman of the Theology Department
at Georgetown University. When Santorum distinguishes between homosexual
people and acts, “he is reflecting Catholic theology very clearly,” he
said.
“Catholic theology does not condone homosexual
activity. However, it does not condemn homosexual persons,” Gillis said,
noting that the church teaches that gays should strive to live in chastity.
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