I'm sure
glad my last name isn't Santorum. For one thing, I wouldn't want to be related
to Rick Santorum. For another thing, his name means "The frothy mix of
lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." And
that's the first thing that pops up on Google.
Santorum's
"Google problem," as it has been dubbed in the media lately, is
something he brought on himself when he compared gays getting married to
man-on-dog sex. Shortly thereafter, a reader of Dan Savage's "Savage
Love" column suggested coining "Santorum" as a sex term. Savage
obliged. And "santorum" was born.
In 2007
Santorum was voted out of his U.S. Senate seat and we didn't hear much from
him. But he's back with his eye on being President
Frothy-Mix-of-Lube-and-Fecal-Matter of the United States, and making sure gays
and lesbians aren't allowed to marry is still one of his biggest concerns.
Needless
to say, President Obama's recent decision to stop defending the Defense of
Marriage Act in court because it is unconstitutional has gotten Santorum riled.
In a
March 4 column for the Des Moines Register, Santorum wrote,
"Intellectually, morally, and constitutionally President Obama's claim is
absurd. And it is a dagger aimed at the heart of a core constitutional value:
the free exercise of religion."
This is,
of course, not true. The anti-gay right has been crying about how treating gays
equally is akin to banning God and demanding everyone worship Perez Hilton. No
one is advocating locking pastors up or turning churches into gay bars. What
Santorum is really arguing for isn't the freedom of religion; it's the freedom
to discriminate and the freedom to legislate using an anti-gay
"morality" code based on religion.
Oddly,
to defend his argument he used the example of Catholic Charities in Boston who
stopped doing adoptions because they didn't want to grant adoptions to gays.
According to The Boston Globe, "(Catholic Charities decided) to abandon
its founding mission, rather than comply with state law requiring that gays be
allowed to adopt children." Mind you, the state wasn't forcing Catholic
Charities to hand over all of the babies to a pillaging gay mob. The state was
saying, "Look, you can't judge a parent unfit just because he or she is a
homo." That was, obviously, too much to ask, and the organization chose
dogma over kids who needed help.
"With
the redefinition of marriage, religious groups of all types will be forced to
make the same type of choice - get out of the business of helping people or
compromise your constitutionally protected convictions," Santorum wrote.
Let me
get this straight: if gays are treated equally then religions of all kinds will
abandon social services? Like the local church-run soup kitchen won't give out
soup anymore because they don't want to give soup to gays? It's as if the only
thing between the teachings of, say, Jesus and abject indifference to human
suffering and need is homosexuality. So long as religious organizations can
discriminate against gays, all is right with the world. Makes perfect sense.
In his
column Santorum charitably added, "I believe if two adults of the same sex
want to have a relationship that is their business. But when they ask society
to give that relationship special recognition and privileges, then we should be
able to have a rational debate about whether that is good public policy."
Aww,
isn't that sweet? Santorum thinks gays deserve to mind their own business. So
long as they aren't asking to be treated fairly, everything's cool.
As for
the "have a rational debate" part, that's pretty suspect coming from
someone who thinks a man having sex with his husband is the same as a man
fucking a dog.