Santorum
Angers Gay Rights Groups
Washington
Post, April 22, 2003
1150 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20071
Email: letterstoed@washpost.com
By Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer
Gay rights groups called yesterday for Senate Republicans
to repudiate remarks by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) comparing homosexuality to
bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.
Santorum made the remarks in an interview with the
Associated Press about a Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality
of a Texas law against sodomy.
“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.”
The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay rights
organization, joined several Pennsylvania groups—including the
Philadelphia-based Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights and the
Pennsylvania Log Cabin Republicans—in calling for Republicans to remove
Santorum from his leadership position.
Santorum is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference,
the party’s number three post.
“These remarks certainly do not reflect the tone of
compassionate conservatism espoused by President Bush,” said John Partain,
president of the Philadelphia chapter of Log Cabin Republicans. “He’s out
of step with mainstream Republicans. He’s aligning himself with the fringe
right-wing extremists of the party.”
The gay rights groups likened Santorum’s remarks to
those last December by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) extolling Strom Thurmond’s
1948 segregationist presidential campaign. Accused of racism, Lott was forced
to resign as majority leader.
“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.’”
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