Sen.
Santorum’s Remarks Reflect a Legitimate and Moral Concern
Omaha
World-Herald, May 3, 2003
World Herald Square, Omaha, NE 68102
Fax: 402-345-4547
Email: pulse@owh.com
By Cal Thomas, Tribune Media Services
WASHINGTON—I waited to see what
my media colleagues and the politicians—from pagan to religious—think of
Sen. Rick Santorum’s remarks to a reporter about homosexuality before
offering my own.
Santorum was not talking about sex between members of the
same gender, per se (though his Catholic faith teaches him the difference
between acceptable “orientation” and unacceptable actions). He was
speaking about a type of moral domino theory, to which many people subscribe.
That theory says that if you cede territory on one social or moral issue, it
makes it more difficult to hold your position on others.
What Santorum did as he spoke of homosexuality,
bestiality, incest and bigamy was not to equate such behavior as having
similar moral standing. Rather, he believes that if the Supreme Court finds
homosexual acts in a private home between “consenting adults” to be
protected by the same “right to privacy” it created out of nothing in 1973
to impose abortion on demand, it will be exceedingly difficult to stand
against a petitioner who argues that such a right conveys legal protection to
all “private behavior.”
As I read and listened to Santorum’s critics, they
seemed to imply there was something wrong with incest, bestiality and bigamy.
Otherwise, why would they express shock and, in some cases, disgust, at what
they regarded as a comparison of these with homosexual practices? The same
tradition, ancient scripture and catechism that proscribe homosexual activity
also speak to every expression of sexuality.
Are we repulsed in these extreme areas because we
confront objective truth, or is it a matter of social conditioning? If the
latter, the Supreme Court might as well strike down all social contracts
should they be seen as violating a “right to privacy.” Would adultery then
no longer be grounds for divorce, and could a woman not sue her philandering
husband for alimony and child support because he had “plowed with someone
else’s heifer,” to quote an ancient Hebrew text? That was Santorum’s
point.
The central question is: At what point should government
leave us alone? There is no absolute right to much in our world, except life
and liberty (which is different from license). Our government proscribes the
use of illegal drugs, even between “consenting adults” in the privacy of
their home. One cannot legally operate a house of prostitution (not yet,
anyway) in the privacy of one’s home, even if all participants are
consenting adults. Some anti-smoking fundamentalists have proposed making it
illegal to smoke at home or to possess a gun, which would violate the Second
Amendment, but they’re working on that, too.
The debate before the court and before the country
concerns the standard that should control us and our lower nature. We have
laws because not everyone would do the right thing (whatever that is in our
relativistic age) were they not compelled to do so. How many more people would
cheat on their taxes if there were no penalties?
This battle to hold the moral line has been lost because
the culture is no longer responsive to ancient beliefs and teachings due to
our primary pursuits of wealth and pleasure. Among the several problems with
this departure from commandments and laws that sustained societies for at
least two millennia is that all things now become not only possible but
probable. Having ignored true North, we are unable to tell where we are or to
navigate out of troubled seas.
It isn’t just homosexuality. I know some very stable,
kind and loving homosexuals. I know some dysfunctional, divorced and abusive
heterosexuals. Some homosexuals probably make better parents than some
heterosexuals when it comes to care, love and support.
But (and this is what Santorum was getting at) who gets
to decide moral questions when they intertwine with temporal law and based on
what standard? If the Texas sodomy law is struck down (it probably will be),
then it is fair to ask: What’s next? To feign outrage that Santorum would
mention these other practices because some might find them offensive is to
ask: On what basis? Would the court be wrong to strike them down, too, should
they be challenged? If they were challenged, on what basis of law, reason,
logic, theology or precedent could any objector then object?
See what I mean about moral dominoes?
[Nope. But that is the same logic that got the U.S. into
the Vietnam War -Bob]
The Constitution and Privacy Rights
Washington
Times, May 5, 2003
3600 New York Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002
Fax: 202-269-3419
Email: letters@washingtontimes.com
Letters
Columnist Cal Thomas (“Privacy vs. whose morals?,”
Commentary, Friday) agrees with Sen. Rick Santorum’s “moral domino
theory,” which says that homosexual sex should be forbidden, or we will have
to allow other forbidden things like bigamy, polygamy, adultery and incest.
This is fallacious reasoning. The only relationship
between the things on their list is that they are forbidden. Once homosexual
sex is not forbidden, why would it be included in the list? Consensual
homosexual sex, which is victimless, has no parallel in bigamy, polygamy,
adultery or incest.
It’s like saying: “If the Supreme Court says that you
have the right to make coffee in your home (stimulants are forbidden by some
religions, after all), then you have the right to make crack cocaine,
anthrax—anything.”
On one level, it is all very hypothetical. When was the
last time you—or anyone else you know—were arrested in your bedroom for
having sex, taken to jail, kept in jail overnight and ultimately convicted and
fined?
The point is not that this is likely to happen to you any
time soon. The point is that Mr. Santorum, the No. 3 man among Senate
Republicans, strongly believes this is OK, and he is concerned only that the
Supreme Court might restrict the ability of states to bar such acts. The
president, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, and most of the rest
of the Republican Senate all stand behind him. Vice President Richard B.
Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter, has been silent.
They are entirely entitled to feel this way. And those
who believe in the separation of church and state—and in the rights to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness—are entirely entitled to be frightened.
—William C. Sostine, Iowa City, Iowa
Cal Thomas has pinned himself firmly on the bull’s horns, and to make it
worse, he is facing toward its rear, so he has no idea which way it is
charging. At the end of his article, he asks from what premise can the
existing morality laws of America be struck down by the Supreme Court: “If
they were challenged, on what basis of law, reason, logic, theology or
precedent could any objector then object?”
On the question of law, according to the 13th Amendment,
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” So, therefore,
everyone not convicted of a crime is a free person and owns his or her own
body. If you own your body, then you can do to it what you want, just like the
slave owners who with impunity would kill, whip and have sex with the slaves
they owned.
On “reason,” I think it is reasonable to assume each
and every one in America not serving a jail sentence owns his or her own body
as implied by the 13th Amendment. On “logic,” see the previous answer. On
“theology,” which theology? The Bible? If it is the Bible, does everyone
in America have to follow its teachings?
And on “precedent,” use his own words regarding the
1973 abortion ruling by the Supreme Court, which (same as the universe) was
“created out of nothing.” I can’t think of a bigger precedent than that,
unless he wants the assertion made by Sir Edward Coke in 1609 of common law
rights that are guaranteed by the Magna Carta of 1215, allowing for the
banning of repugnant laws. If that’s not enough, I’m sure any first-year
law student could find him another answer.
And if all that still doesn’t convince him, then he
could always read about the primary fundamental right, a person’s right of
ownership of his own body.
Crane your head around, Cal. You’re about to hit the
wall.
—Bernard Palmer, Sydney, Australia
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