Last edited: January 29, 2005


Democrats Join Calls Denouncing Santorum

The Data Lounge, April 23, 2003

WASHINGTON—An organization representing Senate Democrats on Tuesday called for Republican Sen. Rick Santorum to resign his leadership position after the lawmaker compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.

A day after gay civil rights groups urged GOP senators to consider removing Santorum from his leadership post, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said the two-term Pennsylvania senator should step down as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the No. 3 job in the party leadership.

The DSCC called Santorum’s remarks “divisive, hurtful and reckless” and said they “are completely out of bounds for someone who is supposed to be a leader in the United States Senate.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Santorum criticized homosexuality while discussing a pending Supreme Court case over a Texas sodomy law.

“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 in the interview.

Santorum, a lawyer, said that was not an _expression of intolerance. “It is simply a reflection of the law,” he said, saying Justice Byron White articulated that view in the infamous 1986 Bowers vs. Hardwick Supreme Court ruling that upheld Georgia’s sodomy statute. “In the interview, I expressed the same concern as many constitutional scholars, and discussed arguments put forward by the State of Texas, as well as Supreme Court justices. If such a law restricting personal conduct is held unconstitutional, so could other existing state laws,” Santorum said.

“My discussion ... was about the Supreme Court privacy case, the constitutional right to privacy in general, and in context of the impact on the family. I am a firm believer that all are equal under the Constitution,” Santorum said.

On Wednesday, Santorum added that his remarks about homosexuality were “taken out of context.”

But the news agency notes that Santorum also talked about homosexuality in general during the interview, and that he made it clear he did not approve of “acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships.”

Specifically, the Pennsylvania Senator describes gay sexual activity as a threat to society and the family. “I have no problem with homosexuality,” he said. “I have a problem with homosexual acts.”

“Senator Santorum has no reason to apologize,” a spokesman for Santorum said, adding that the senator was ignoring as unwarranted the Democratic call to step down.


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