Is the Catholic senator a homophobe? Or is he just speaking the truth?
4/24/2003 9:15:55 AM
Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican from Pennsylvania and a Catholic, raised a furor a couple days ago with comments he made about homosexuality during an interview with Associated Press. Those pundits and talking heads going after the senator have focused on a couple sentences within the interview, effectively taking them out of context (big surprise!). The complete interview can be read here. Here is the passage causing the commotion :
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.
National Review Online contributing editor Stanley Kurtz, a non-Christian, comes to the defense of Senator Santorum in a lengthy and excellent piece on the NRO site. He begins by stating:
I come to the question of homosexuality and public policy from a different perspective than U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. I would like to see sodomy laws abolished, and have said so publicly. I should also note that I am not religious, and do not see homosexuality as sinful. Nonetheless, I am convinced that Sen. Santorum's recent remarks on homosexuality have been badly distorted by both the Democratic party and the mainstream press. The shameful public response to Sen. Santorum's statements is a sad and revealing example of liberal media bias at its worst.
Both the interview and Kurtz's article are worth reading, especially since this issue and related issues–and the accompanying distortion by much of the media–are not going away anytime soon.
