Last edited: January 30, 2005


300 Protest Santorum; GOP Critics Emerge

Gay.com, April 24, 2003

By Tom Musbach, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network

SUMMARY: Opposition to Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and his published anti-gay comments mounted Thursday with a rally and criticism from GOP senators.

Opposition to Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and his published anti-gay comments mounted Thursday, as more Republicans broke their silence and hundreds of protesters rallied outside the senator’s office.

In Philadelphia’s Center City district, a wide range of people, from office workers and city officials to students and activists, demonstrated Thursday afternoon against Santorum’s views. One of the protest’s organizers, Mike Marsico of the Liberty City Democratic Club, estimated the crowd at nearly 300.

The protesters stopped traffic briefly on Broad Street, and they chanted and carried signs with messages like “Resist hate” and “See Dick hate; see Dick lose.”

Marsico told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network he hopes the protest will “start a momentum to get this guy out of office in three years.”

The demonstration followed days of controversy surrounding Sen. Santorum, who has refused to apologize for comments that equated gays with bigamists and people who commit incest.

After Santorum’s remarks were published on Monday, criticism and demands for an apology came mostly from gay rights advocates and Democrats—with the exception of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest gay GOP group.

On Wednesday, however, the Republican Unity Coalition (RUC), “a gay-straight organization dedicated to making homosexuality a non-issue,” spoke out. The group demanded that Santorum apologize, but it stopped short of insisting that he resign from his post as the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate. Members of the RUC include former President Gerald Ford and Mary Cheney, the vice president’s lesbian daughter.

Two Republican senators, both moderates, issued statements on Thursday criticizing their colleague’s remarks.

“Discrimination and bigotry have no place in our society, and I believe Sen. Santorum’s unfortunate remarks undermine Republican principles of inclusion and opportunity,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

“I thought his choice of comparisons was unfortunate and the premise that the right of privacy does not exist—just plain wrong,” said Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I. “Sen. Santorum’s views are not held by this Republican and many others in our party.”

But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Arlen Specter, the senior GOP senator from Pennsylvania, have voiced support for Santorum.

“Rick is a consistent voice for inclusion and compassion in the Republican Party and in the Senate, and to suggest otherwise is just politics,” Frist said in a statement on Wednesday.

The White House had not yet commented on the situation, as of Thursday afternoon.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, also a Democratic presidential candidate, are among those who have demanded that Santorum resign as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

“Gay-bashing is not a legitimate public policy discussion; it is immoral,” Dean said in a statement on Wednesday. “Rick Santorum’s failure to recognize that attacking people because of who they are is morally wrong makes him unfit for a leadership position in the United States Senate.”


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