GOP
Antigay Poison
Berkshire
Eagle, April 28, 2003
Box 1171, Pittsfield, MA 01201
Fax: 413-499-3419
Editorial
National Republican party hostility to the cause of gay
and lesbian rights is one of the unhappy givens of life in these times. But
once in a while a party Bigfoot holds forth on the subject in a way that’s
especially mind-boggling. Such was the case last week when Pennsylvania’s
Rick Santorum, third in the party’s Senate leadership, commented in an
interview about a Supreme Court challenge to Texas’s sodomy law. Mr.
Santorum said if the court endorsed a right to consensual, private, gay sex,
“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.” Including, presumably, flagpole-sitting, fence-watching, and a
flat-foot floogie with a floy-floy.
Where does the GOP come up with these characters?
There’s some talk now of the Trent Lott-ization of Mr. Santorum, but
there’s little chance he’ll be forced out of his chairmanship of the
Senate Republican Conference for a dumb remark he made about gays. The country
has come a long way on the subject of gay rights—and simple, elementary
understanding of homosexuality—but there is still enough ignorance and fear
and trembling on the subject for some clueless senators to ask, “Why is this
guy being criticized?”
The Supreme Court case Mr. Santorum was referring to was
heard by the justices last month and a decision is expected before July. Two
Texas men who were convicted for sex in a private home—after a malicious
neighbor reported a disturbance and the cops busted in—have asked the court
to throw out the state’s sodomy law, which applies only to homosexuals.
Court-watchers believe the court might strike down the
Texas law, not on privacy grounds but on equal-rights grounds. Shamefully,
that would still leave 10 states regulating what homosexual and heterosexual
adults choose to do in their bedrooms.
A spokesperson for Mr. Santorum said his remarks referred
only to the Supreme Court case, and he “has no problem with gay, lesbian,
bisexual or transgendered individuals.” No problem except such people should
be considered criminals. If the GOP had any sense of decency, it would fire
Mr. Santorum from his leadership post.
More weird Republican anti-gay venom surfaced last week
when The New York Times reported that AIDS researchers at the National
Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were
being warned by project officers to avoid certain words and phrases when
submitting grant proposals. Among the terms that could invite controversy and
possible rejection were “gay,” “homosexual” and “transgender.” One
researcher told the Times he planned a study on gay men and HIV testing.
When the subjects were gay men, he said, “It’s hard
not to mention them in your abstract.” The researcher had better find a way
not to mention them, though, as long as the Bush administration infects the
pursuit of science with its medieval prejudices.
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