Santorum
Vies to Succeed Helms as Most Homophobic Senator
Bay
Area Reporter, April 24, 2003
395 Ninth Street; San Francisco, CA 94103-3831
Email: bar@logx.com
By Bob Roehr, Washington, DC
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the third ranking
Republican in that body, generated a firestorm of criticism with comments he
made comparing gay rights to incest. The Human Rights Campaign this week
called for him to step down from his leadership position.
An April 21 article by the Associated Press said Santorum
believes that “homosexuality, feminism, liberalism all undermine the family.
Even parts of the Constitution can harm the family.”
Buried within and largely ignored by the first round of
media coverage was the fact that Santorum does not believe in the broader
concept of individual privacy.
“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,” the Pennsylvania lawmaker said
in the recent interview, fuming over a landmark gay rights case before the
high court that pits a Texas sodomy law against equality and privacy rights.
“All of those things are antithetical to a healthy,
stable, traditional family,” Santorum said. “And that’s sort of where we
are in today’s world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this
right to privacy that doesn’t exist, in my opinion, in the United States
Constitution.”
Santorum’s press spokeswoman, Erica Clayton Wright,
later sought to clarify by saying that the senator had no problem with gay
relationships, he was “speaking about the right to privacy within the
context of the Supreme Court case.” He did not want to elevate gay sex to
the level of a constitutional right.
Winnie Stachelberg, HRC’s political director, said that
Santorum’s comments “are deeply hurtful and play on deep-seated fears that
fly in the face of scientific evidence, common sense, and basic decency.
Clearly there is no compassion in his conservatism.”
HRC spokesman David Smith dismissed Wright’s
clarification that Santorum 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,’” Smith said.
“There is nothing conservative about allowing law
enforcement officials to enter the home of any American and arrest them for
simply being gay,” said Log Cabin Republican Executive Director Patrick
Guerriero, referring to the Texas sodomy case now before the court. “I am
appalled that a member of the United States Senate leadership would advocate
dividing Americans with ugly hate-filled rhetoric.”
Santorum is chairman of the Republican conference in the
Senate, third in his party’s leadership.
“The discriminatory remarks made by Senator Santorum
clearly do not reflect the compassionate conservatism promised by our
president,” added John Partain, president of Pennsylvania Log Cabin
Republicans. “I thought we were past these types of remarks now that Jesse
Helms is no longer in the Senate.”
“If Senator Santorum is really concerned with what’s
best for American families, he would show compassion and actively promote
policies that support all families, including lesbian and gay families,”
said Stacey Sobel, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil
Rights, in Philadelphia.
Santorum is scheduled to appear at a town hall meeting in
Philadelphia on the morning of April 23. Local community activists plan on
attending that meeting.
Santorum, 44, is a brash young favorite of the Christian
right. He has pushed their social agenda in his four years in the House and 10
years in the Senate.
Concerned Women for America attacked Log Cabin “thought
police” who “don’t see any room in the ‘big tent’ [of the Republican
Party] for people who object to homosexual behavior on religious grounds.”
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked about the
comments at his press briefing on Tuesday, April 22. He said that he had not
talked with the president about it, they were busy on other matters.
“The silence with which President Bush and the
Republican Party leadership have greeted Senator Santorum’s remarks is
deafening,” said a statement released by Democratic presidential candidate
Howard Dean.
Rival Democratic presidential candidate Senator John
Kerry (D-Massachusetts), also issued a statement critical of the White
House’s lack of response.
“The White House speaks the rhetoric of compassionate
conservatism but they’re silent while their chief lieutenants make divisive
and hurtful comments that have no place in our politics,” Kerry said.
HRC compared Santorum’s comments to ones that Senator
Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) made last year praising the segregationist past of
Senator Strom Thurmond. Those comments led to Lott stepping down as majority
leader.
HRC has called upon Santorum to step down as chairman of
the Republican conference.
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