Another member of Congress has opened wide and put his foot right in his mouth. This time, following the verbal examples of Trent Lott and Jim Moran, Rick Santorum has spouted off about his opinion of the Supreme Court case on sodomy laws.
In the Washington Post:
“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, according to the AP.
Santorum spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said the quote was accurate “only in the context related specifically to the right to privacy in the Supreme Court case.” The senator, she said, “has no problem with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals.”
“For the second time in a matter of months, we see a senior Republican leader in the Senate disparaging an entire group of Americans,” said HRC spokesman David Smith. “While we welcome his spokeswoman’s clarification that he has no problem with gay people, it’s analogous to saying, ‘I have no problem with Jewish people or black people, I just don’t think they should be equal under the law.’ “
I have a real problem with the drive to legislate behavior in private. The Constitution does not prohibit gay sex, nor does it prohibit such things as adultery. These are issues best left to moralists or, sometimes, religion. But they are not the purview of the government, in my opinion. Why in the world does anyone care who I have sex with, as long as no one is hurt and the person is of a reasonable age of consent? You don’t see the conservative family movement barging into the bedrooms of their over-sexed and repressed college aged sons, demanding that they stop date-raping the girls they picked up at the bar, do you? ‘Cause they’re just youthful indiscretions.
[Update: Among Santorum’s bewildering statements are the following: “I have no problem with homosexuality — I have a problem with homosexual acts.” Hmm. Perhaps he needs a better technique. And: “The basic liberal philosophy is materialistic.” Maybe that’s because the conservatives have all the money and the liberals are just jealous.]
