By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
April 26, 2003
The Iraq War must be over, ratings down and editors looking for a replacement issue to shock, upset or scare the public. On Tuesday the two-week old Rick Santorum story broke complete with feigned gasping on the liberal left. As reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Outraged gay-rights groups were calling on “Senate Republicans to consider removing Rick Santorum (R., PA) from his leadership post after comments in which he compared gay sex to incest.”
Actually, that wasn’t exactly what Santorum said, although I have no problem with the comparison. Over thousands of years, incest, adultery, homosexuality, and in many cultures, polygamy or bigamy, which Santorum also mentioned, have been considered negative behaviors that disrupt or destroy rather than build up societies.
On April 7, a reporter had asked Santorum: “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?”
And, according to a transcript provided by Associated Press the Senator responded:
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 deviancy 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."
To juice up the story, two weeks after the interview, Philadelphia Inquirer writer Chris Mondics inserted the word “gay” after consensual claiming that was what “consensual sex” meant. Of course, that isn’t true. “Consensual sex” means both parties consenting to a sexual act. Adultery is a consensual act, but rape, whether heterosexual or homosexual is not a consensual act. Obviously, in cultures where bigamy and polygamy are legal and open, they are forms of consensual sex also.
However, David Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group, responded to the inserted word by accusing Santorum of “an affront to millions of Americans” and demanded that he be removed from his leadership position in the GOP.
The Senator actually made his point extremely clear in responding to the reporter’s question about the Catholic Church scandal:
SANTORUM: "In this case, what we're talking about, basically, are 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 worldview 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."
Santorum’s obvious point was simple: If there’s nothing wrong with consensual homosexual sex, why did the media attack the Catholic Church over homosexual priests having consensual sex with “post-pubescent men,” which is any male over age 14 under common law, who could have easily not given their consent?
AP: "Well, what would you do?"
SANTORUM: "What would I do with what?"
AP: "I mean, how would you remedy? What's the alternative? 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 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."
The obvious issue Santorum was addressing, and which the reporters and the homosexual critics studiously avoided addressing, is simply: Is there any LIMIT to the right of privacy in the Supreme Court’s view? For example, if a couple, married, unmarried or homosexual, consensually agree to end the life of one of them, say in a fit of depression, should the survivor be prosecuted for murder or not?
In the interview Santorum referred to the 1965 Supreme Court decision in Griswold v Connecticut that held a Connecticut law making the use of contraceptives a criminal offense was “an unconstitutional invasion of the right of privacy of married persons.” It made no reference whatever to the right of privacy of unmarried homosexuals to adopt behavior that causes most of them to die by age 41 or sexual behavior of unmarried heterosexuals that destroys marriages and families.
Santorum’s point was: Does the “right of privacy” as outlined in Griswold v Connecticut really mean anything goes as long as two people privately agree to do it, regardless of how deviant, dangerous and destructive to society it might be?
Somehow, I don’t think so.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com