As someone from Southwestern Pennsylvania, whenever Santorum is in the news, I feel obliged to apologize for him. Please don’t hold it against us, we’re a wonderful region and you should totally come visit.
But as a friendly reminder, even if he was really running for President (he has no chance of winning either the nomination or the election, and he knows it. He’s running for a job at FOX news for the next four years), he has quite a few problems.
You’ve probably heard a lot, so I’ll put some thoughts behind the jump:
Sullivan covers it very well:
He does not believe that you have the right to adult, consensual sex in your own bedroom, if the government decides it’s bad for society as a whole. That includes masturbation and contraception on exactly the same grounds as homosexual acts. All of them are sodomy and subject to government regulation. Santorum can say he is just referring to the role of the courts, not backing substantive legislation to criminalize private adult consensual sex. But it’s clear he believes that such sex is a serious threat to civilization, and only prudential grounds should restrain the government’s decision to enforce that morality.
Recall that Santorum is contemptuous of the whole idea of the pursuit of happiness, if it isn’t regulated by Catholic natural law. He is opposed, in his own words, to “this whole idea of personal autonomy,” not to mention “the idea that people should be left alone.”
To reiterate, he does not believe you have a right to privacy, even in your bedroom. He thinks birth control should be illegal, and he has a strange obsession with demonizing the LGBT community (to the point of whispers asking if he’s the next Larry Craig, he who doth protest too much.)
Dan Savage has a great post about Santorum’s (20 year old) daughter, who totally claims to have gay friends who support her father:
Um… political reporters? Stop accepting homophobes’ claims of gay friendship at face value. Elizabeth Santorum says she has gay friends who support her dad based on his family platform? That is an astonishing assertion. Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his having compared sex between consenting adults of the same sex to child rape and dog fucking? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his having asserted that gay relationships are a threat to “homeland security”? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his opposition not just to gay marriage, but to any legal recognition of same-sex relationships at all (no civil unions, no domestic partnerships)? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his promise to write anti-gay bigotry into the US Constitution, forcibly divorce every same-sex couple that has gotten legally married in the US over the last decade, and reinstate DADT? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his opposition to adoptions by same-sex couples?
And speaking of Dan Savage, I’ll close with this new bumper sticker:
The Republican Party deserve better. We all deserve better.
