Last edited: January 31, 2005


LLEGÓ Seeks Removal of Santorum From Senate Leadership Position

National Latino Sexual-Minority Group Outraged by Senator’s Comparison of Homosexuality to Bigamy, Incest, Adultery

The National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Organization, April 23, 2003
Media Contact: Ronald Hube, (202) 408-5380, ext. 108

Washington, D.C.—LLEGÓ—the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Organization—wrote this week to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, chairperson of the Congressional Hispanic Conference, asking that Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) be removed from his post as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

The call for Santorum’s dismissal from the majority party’s third highest position in the Senate comes in the wake of comments attributed to him by the Associated Press this week. According to AP, Santorum said in reply to a question about homosexuality, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual 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 was referring to a Texas sodomy-law case which is before the Supreme Court.

“All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable traditional family,” Santorum went on to say, according to AP. “Senator Santorum’s comments are an affront to the growing number of same-sex households raising children in loving and caring homes,” said Martín Ornelas-Quintero, LLEGÓ executive director, in a letter to Frist and Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican. “Our families are as legitimate as heterosexual families, and deserve the same level of respect and recognition.” Other sexual minority advocacy groups, including the nation’s largest—the Human Rights Campaign—have also called for Santorum’s removal from his Senate leadership position, as have many Pennsylvania organizations such as the state’s Log Cabin Republicans and the Pennsylvania Gay and Lesbian Alliance.

The controversy comes only months after another prominent Republican senator, Trent Lott of Mississippi, was forced out of his post as majority leader after making remarks seen as racist. More recently, Democratic congressman Jim Moran of Virginia lost a House leadership position after saying Jews were pushing the White House toward invading Iraq.

LLEGÓ is the nation’s only organization devoted to organizing Latino LGBT communities on a local, regional, national and international level. A nonprofit group, LLEGÓ addresses social, health, and political disparities based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and ethnicity affecting the Latino LGBT community. LLEGÓ is home to various programs providing infrastructure development to Latino LGBT communities in the United States and Latin America.

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