Sen. Santorum Equates Homosexuality with Incest

[Clay Fink]

I already knew Santorum was a religious nut but it's nice to see him "out" himself as a bigot too. It will be interesting to see if the GOP repudiates his statement.


Gay groups want Santorum out of leadership


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By Lara Jakes Jordan



April 22, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- Gay-rights groups, fuming over Sen. Rick Santorum's comparison of homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery, urged Republican leaders Monday to consider removing the Pennsylvania lawmaker from the GOP Senate leadership.

A coalition of groups in Washington and Pennsylvania compared Santorum's remarks to those by those last December by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott about Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist campaign for the presidency. Shortly afterward, Lott was forced to resign as Republican Senate leader.

Santorum is chairman of the GOP conference in the Senate, third in his party's leadership, behind Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

"We're urging the Republican leadership to condemn the remarks. They were stunning in their insensitivity, and they're the same types of remarks that sparked outrage toward Sen. Lott," said David Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay advocacy organization. "We would ask that the leadership reconsider his standing within the conference leadership."
In an interview with The Associated Press, Santorum criticized homosexuality while discussing a pending Supreme Court case over a 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, R-Pa., said in the interview, published Monday.

Santorum spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said the lawmaker's comments were "were specific to the Supreme Court case."

The White House did not immediately return a call seeking comment, and a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Frist declined comment.

Lott resigned his post in December after making remarks at a 100th birthday celebration for Thurmond that were widely considered racially insensitive and condemned by the White House. Lott later apologized.

Among the groups condemning Santorum's remarks were the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, the Pennsylvania Log Cabin Republicans, OutFront, and the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition.

Associated Press

[Clay Fink]

Andrew Sullivan's take on the whole business. I consider Sullivan to be a twit but his POV is worthwhile on this issue:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/04/22/santorum/index.html

[Sergio Zamora]

"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,"

I see no inconsistency in this.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally posted by Clay Fink
Sen. Rick Santorum's comparison of homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery

I'm sure he meant it in a good way.

[Clay Fink]

You have the right to anything

How about cannibalism, vivisection of house pets, watching TV?

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally posted by Clay Fink
How about cannibalism, vivisection of house pets, watching TV?

Yep, all covered.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally posted by Clay Fink
How about cannibalism, vivisection of house pets, watching TV?

No TV!

[Clay Fink]

How about watching TV shows that depict cannibalism, homosexuality, bigamy, poligamy, incest, vivisection and watching TV? Sound's like the new variety show Tom Delay's doing on Fox.

[RBS]

Ah needs tuh have sex with mah dawg. Ah cain'ts wait fuh
thuh Supreem Cawrt tuh payiss this bihl.

Seriously, it shows how far we've come as a society that he can even be condemned.

Douchebag.

[Monte Smith]

Homosexuality = incest? Huh. All I can figure is he means they're both really, really hot.

[mke]

A more complete quote makes him look worse:

"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. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution."

The salon article brings up some interesting points, notably that

"(In the same year that Texas passed its current anti-sodomy law for gays, it repealed the law against bestiality) You can even have same-gender gay sex with your dog and the law in Texas will protect you. It's only if you're gay and want to have consensual sex with another adult in private that the law draws the line."

I don't see how incest can be compared to consensual sex of any kind. And if Americans have no right to privacy from their government... I wonder what Scott Dolan thinks of that.

[Clay Fink]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
Homosexuality = incest? Huh. All I can figure is he means they're both really, really hot.

You're such a wit Monte.

[Tanager]

I agree - the right to privacy view is (with apologies to any gay folks) perhaps even more threatening and dangerous than his outright bigotry.

[clinthopson]

You know what they say about guys who are extremely anti-homosexual.

[Tanager]

I think Monte would say they're really hot, did you mean something else?

[Clay Fink]

My feeling is that many in the GOP think like this but are usually too afraid to say it. Unfortunately, beating up on Gays is less of a taboo than is being a racist, so I don't think Rick S. will loose his job over this. This sort of thing must be difficult for gay republicans and conservatives. Why the hell consensual sexual behaviour between adults is a legal/political issue is beyond me. Right wingers, particularly the christianists, seem to be obsessed with homosexuality. I knew a guy at work a long time ago who was a born-again and he was filled with info on what gays "did", based on reading christian literature of course. I think Tim Lahey (the "Left Behind" guy) wrote an influential book on the "gay agenda". There was also the famous speech that Rep. William Danemyer gave, and had added to the congressional record, where he reviewed gay sex practices in detail.

What a bunch of sick fucks. Somehow I think this also relates to their fascination with Bill Clinton's sex life.

[mke]

What's a "christianist"?

[Clay Fink]

Originally posted by mke
What's a "christianist"?

I meant it to refer to members of what we call the "Christian Right"; conservative, mostly protestant, christians who are involved in the republican party in the US. Mark Crispin Miller uses the term in his book "The Bush Dislexicon", an essential read.

[RBS]

Originally posted by Clay Fink
This sort of thing must be difficult for gay republicans and conservatives.

What, all three of them?

But seriously, folks.

I think they're afraid of their homosexual tendencies. That's why they put the enemy "out there."

Bunch of sick fucks is right.

[bluenoter]

Senators are speaking up now (Democrats, naturally):

04-22) 14:20 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

The Senate Democrats' political organization on Tuesday called for Republican Sen. Rick Santorum to resign his leadership position after the lawmaker compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.

One day after gay-rights groups urged GOP senators to consider removing Santorum from his leadership post, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said the two-term Pennsylvania senator should step down as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the No. 3 job in the party leadership.

The DSCC called Santorum's remarks "divisive, hurtful and reckless" and said they "are completely out of bounds for someone who is supposed to be a leader in the United States Senate."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Santorum criticized homosexuality while discussing a pending Supreme Court case over a 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, published Monday.

Santorum spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said Monday that the lawmaker's comments were "were specific to the Supreme Court case." The senator's office had no immediate comment Tuesday to the DSCC's call for him to give up his leadership job.

The DSCC also urged Santorum's fellow Republican senator, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, to repudiate the remarks. Specter, a moderate Republican, is up for re-election in 2004 and faces a primary challenge from conservative Republican Rep. Pat Toomey.

Questioned at the White House news briefing, press secretary Ari Fleischer had no comment on Santorum's remarks, saying he had not seen the "the entire context of the interview. And ... I haven't talked to the president about it so I really don't have anything to offer."

Separately, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry issued a statement criticizing Santorum's comments and assailing the White House for remaining silent "while their chief lieutenants make divisive and hurtful comments that have no place in our politics."

"Every day in our country, gay and lesbian Americans get up, go to work, pay their taxes, support their families and contribute to the nation they love. These comments take us backwards in America," said the Massachusetts senator.

Democratic hopeful Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said Santorum "is wrong. The Texas law is unconstitutional and an insult to the better America we need to build for all our people."

[Ron Thorne]

I saw the press briefing this morning in which the following remark was made.

Questioned at the White House news briefing, press secretary Ari Fleischer had no comment on Santorum's remarks, saying he had not seen the "the entire context of the interview. And ... I haven't talked to the president about it so I really don't have anything to offer."

The reporter immediately asked Fleischer, "do you need a context"?

I'm afraid it's even less onerous (in certain circles) to be homophobic than to be racist, as Clay observed.

Originally posted by mke
What's a "christianist"?

Someone who plays the christianola?

[patricia]

Originally posted by Clay Fink
How about cannibalism, vivisection of house pets, watching TV?

Just a minute. I draw the line at watching TV!!!! Next thing you know, the whole country will know about the evils of sex and then where will we all be??? I say appoint a congressional committee to go on a house to house search and rid the country of their "Devil's Eyballs". Nip this in the bud, or condemn yourselves, and your loved ones to the eternal fires of Hell.
Now!!! It may already be too late.

[mke]

Originally posted by Ron Thorne
The reporter immediately asked Fleischer, "do you need a context"?

I think context is always needed.

[walto]

""Every day in our country, gay and lesbian Americans get up, go to work, pay their taxes, support their families and contribute to the nation they love. These comments take us backwards in America," said the Massachusetts senator."



Of course, that may be true of people having sex with their big brothers, too. & how would this argument work regarding polygamists? (Not looking for the Utah vote this week, he probably frowns on that practice.)

Anyhow, leave it to Kerry and his non-stop spinmeisters to get things 40% sideways.

Sen. Santorum Equates Homosexuality with Incest

Maybe he was "thinking" that the psychological origins were the same and didn't splain himself clearly.

[Clay Fink]

Here's some context for you. His logic is actuall much more twisted than I originally thought. So what happened in the Catholic Church was "priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men". I thought it was priests having sex with underage boys, in almost all cases nonconsensually.

This guy's thinking is quite alarming. What's different about him as compared to Mullah Omar or Hitler? If this guy insn't arguing for a Theocracy then I don't understand english.

"If New York doesn't want sodomy laws, if the people of New York want abortion, fine. I mean, I wouldn't agree with it, but that's their right. But I don't agree with the Supreme Court coming in."

Yea, right. Just like how Ashcroft supports "states rights" when it comes to issues dear to his christian heart.


April 23, 2003 | An unedited section of the Associated Press interview, taped April 7, with Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. Words that couldn't be heard clearly on the tape are marked (unintelligible).

AP: If you're saying that liberalism is taking power away from the families, how is conservatism giving more power to the families?

SANTORUM: Putting more money in their pocketbook is one. The more money you take away from families is the less power that family has. And that's a basic power. The average American family in the 1950s paid (unintelligible) percent in federal taxes. An average American family now pays about 25 percent.

The argument is, yes, we need to help other people. But one of the things we tried to do with welfare, and we're trying to do with other programs is, we're setting levels of expectation and responsibility, which the left never wanted to do. They don't want to judge. They say, Oh, you can't judge people. They should be able to do what they want to do. Well, not if you're taking my money and giving it to them. But it's this whole idea of moral equivalency. (unintelligible) My feeling is, well, if it's my money, I have a right to judge.

AP: Speaking of liberalism, there was a story in The Washington Post about six months ago, they'd pulled something off the Web, some article that you wrote blaming, according to The Washington Post, blaming in part the Catholic Church scandal on liberalism. Can you explain that?

SANTORUM: You have the problem within the church. Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get. You're going to get a lot of things that you're sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don't really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don't be surprised that you get more of it.

AP: The right to privacy lifestyle?

SANTORUM: The right to privacy lifestyle.

AP: What's the alternative?

SANTORUM: In this case, what we're talking about, basically, is priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We're not talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We're talking about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a perfectly fine relationship as long as it's consensual between people. If you view the world that way, and you say that's fine, you would assume that you would see more of it.

AP: Well, what would you do?

SANTORUM: What would I do with what?

AP: I mean, how would you remedy? What's the alternative?

SANTORUM: First off, I don't believe --

AP: I mean, should we outlaw homosexuality?

SANTORUM: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it's not the person, it's the person's actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.

AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And 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. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold -- Griswold was the contraceptive case -- and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you -- this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality --

AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

SANTORUM: And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.

AP: Sorry, I just never expected to talk about that when I came over here to interview you. Would a President Santorum eliminate a right to privacy -- you don't agree with it?

SANTORUM: I've been very clear about that. The right to privacy is a right that was created in a law that set forth a (ban on) rights to limit individual passions. And I don't agree with that. So I would make the argument that with President, or Senator or Congressman or whoever Santorum, I would put it back to where it is, the democratic process. If New York doesn't want sodomy laws, if the people of New York want abortion, fine. I mean, I wouldn't agree with it, but that's their right. But I don't agree with the Supreme Court coming in.

Associated Press

[Uli]

Originally posted by Clay Fink

SANTORUM: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it's not the person, it's the person's actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.

That's brilliant.

[Clay Fink]

Just so you don't think this isn't for real here's the link:

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/...rum/index.html

[Sergio Zamora]

Fuck!