homophobia

And he needs to be removed from a leadership role in the GOP, just like Lott was. Here’s why:

Santorum says homosexual acts are threat to American family
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rick Santorum, the Senate’s third-ranked Republican who is under fire from gay-rights groups and Democrats, says he has “no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts.”

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press two weeks ago, Santorum, R-Pa., said he believes homosexual acts are a threat to the American family. He drew criticism from gays and Democrats after parts of the interview — during which he compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery — were published Monday.

“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,” Santorum said during an interview taped April 7 in his Senate office.

“And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual,” he said. “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.”

Note that this means he says that it’s okay to be gay, but you should never fall in love and have a romantic relationship with some one of the same sex if you are. You should be celibate and single all of your life, or you should do something terribly destructive like have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, which would be based on a lie and harm both parties. But if you have a romantic relationship with someone of your own sex, you should do so under fear of being arrested.

Given a chance to clarify his comments before the story was published, Santorum said: “I can’t deny that I said it, and I can’t deny that’s how I feel.”

During Santorum’s interview with the AP, he brought up a pending Supreme Court case over a Texas sodomy law within the context of his discussion on homosexual acts.

“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.”

First of all, note that he said “consensual sex” not “gay consensual sex” — so he’s asserting that the government has the ability to come into the bedrooms of heterosexuals as well as gay people. That should scare everyone. Lots of news services are mis-quoting this by adding the word gay in parentheses, but that’s not what he said, and he’s clarified that’s not what he meant. Second, how does it follow that gay people’s right to consensual sex would somehow lead to societal approval of incest? The vast majority of incest occurs under non-consensual conditions. Also, this is based on the “slippery slope” argument, read here why this argument is completely invalid (this is Logic 101, folks.)

On Tuesday, Santorum’s office released a statement to underscore that those comments were made in the context of the court case.

“My discussion with The Associated Press was about the Supreme Court privacy case, the constitutional right to privacy in general, and in context of the impact on the family,” Santorum said in the statement. “I am a firm believer that all are equal under the Constitution. My comments should not be misconstrued in any way as a statement on individual lifestyles.”

No? You’re condemning an entire group of people to celibacy under fear of arrest, and somehow suggesting that is equal protection under the Constitution? How do you figure that?

Santorum also criticized, during the April 7 interview, what he called “a whole feminist movement that’s built around the fact that fathers are unnecessary.” He answered “absolutely” when asked if liberalism takes power away from the family.

There has never been any part of the feminist movement that says that fathers are unnecessary. This is nothing but bull-shit rhetoric. It’s true that many lesbians have children. Most of them have some type of father figure. Some don’t. There are many single women in this country, either divorced or widowed, that don’t have father figures for their children. Should they be forced to get married to “provide a father” for their children? Scores of studies prove that children raised without a father or without a mother are not harmed in any way by the lack of a “role model.” Does this mean that fathers are “unnecessary”? No. But they aren’t mandatory, either.

“The basic liberal philosophy is materialistic, is relativistic, to the point of, you’ve got candidates for president saying we should condone different types of marriage,” Santorum said. “That is, to me, the death knell of the American family.”

How? How How How? I’ve never heard a real answer to this one. How does my falling in love with women have any effect on the “American Family”? If a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman want to get married and have a bunch of kids, how is my love life interfering with their decision? I’m certainly not standing in front of the church door tripping them as they go in. If I get married to my female partner in a church, that has no effect on the “traditional American Family.”

And what does he mean by “materialistic, is relativistic”? I’m sorry, but the whole “moral relativism” critique is again, a simple-minded repeating of the slippery-slope argument. Ethics hasn’t ever been that simple, and shouldn’t be dumbed down because the Republicans have cut their own school budgets so far that their own Stepford children are too ignorant to understand the world around them, and thus feel they should force everyone into their own tunnel-vision of the world.