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 antigay 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 antigay “morality” code based on religion.
Oddly, to defend his argument, he used the example of Catholic Charities in Boston, which stopped doing adoptions because agency officials 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.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.