Presidential candidate Howard Dean speaks out for basic human decency on his website today...
In an interview published yesterday with the Associated Press, Rick Santorum, the third highest ranking Republican in the Senate, compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. I am outraged by Senator Santorum's remarks.That a leader of the Republican Party would make such insensitive and divisive comments-comments that are derogatory and meant to harm an entire group of Americans, their friends and their families-is not only outrageous, but deeply offensive.
The silence with which President Bush and the Republican Party leadership have greeted Sen. Santorum's remarks is deafening. It is the same silence that greeted Senator Lott's offensive remarks in December. It is a silence that implicitly condones a policy of domestic divisiveness, a policy that seeks to divide Americans again and again on the basis of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.
It is a policy that must end, and it is a policy that will end with a Dean Presidency. This Saturday, April 26th, marks the third anniversary of the signing of the Civil Unions bill in Vermont. I signed that bill because I believe no human being should be treated with less dignity than others simply because that person belongs to a different category or group. I also believe that, as Americans, it is our duty to speak up when others are treated wrongly-especially when others are treated wrongly by a member of the Senate leadership.
I urge all Americans, and members of both parties, to join me in condemning Sen. Santorum's remarks. They are unacceptable, and silence is an unacceptable response. By standing up against such divisive rhetoric-whether one is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight-we can begin to achieve the American ideal of equal rights for all people.
There are, indeed, differences between Democrats and Republicans. I am delighted beyond measure that Democrats are finally articulating them. How any homosexual could even dream of supporting the bigoted and homophobic leadership of the Republican Party is beyond me.
Rick Santorum is, indeed, amazingly creepy, and does not believe the right to privacy exists; as Andrew Sullivan quite articulately puts it on Salon.com:
In fact, Texas law allows anyone to have sex with their dog in private, if they are so inclined. (In the same year that Texas passed its current anti-sodomy law for gays, it repealed the law against bestiality.) You can even have same-gender gay sex with your dog and the law in Texas will protect you. It's only if you're gay and want to have consensual sex with another adult in private that the law draws the line. Now, recall what Santorum specifically said. His concern was that allowing gay people to have sexual privacy would lead to "the right to anything." Anything. Yep. That means for Santorum, the right to practice bestiality in the privacy of your own home isn't part of the slippery slope toward Gomorrah but a gay couple's private relationship is. And the awful thing is that I don't think I'm misreading him. I think he thinks that a gay man's sex life is the moral equivalent of -- no, worse than -- an animal's. And this is the young face of the Republican Party in the Senate.
(And if my citing Sullivan in a favourable light should shock you, remember: 'The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.' Though elsewhere Sullivan does grossly exaggerate, as usual, the impact MP George Galloway's possible payoffs by Iraq might have on the anti-war movement. Sullivan calls the repercussions 'epic'...I don't see how, exactly. Galloway's always been a bit creepy; from where I'm sitting, it seems as if the inspirational anti-war voices in Parliament have been Robin Cook and Tam Dalyell. Robin Cook has given some kick-ass speeches since quitting the Government, which you might still be able to watch on the BBC News site. Anyhow, the point is, Galloway isn't in the driver's seat of the anti-war movement, and anti-war people can be creepy, too. Don't conflate one individual with the movement; that's like thinking Santorum speaks for Sullivan because they're both pro-war, to bring this back to a semblance of topicality.)
PS: Hog. Do other people use 'hog' as a slang term for 'penis'? Is it just an Iowa thing? Is it just a 'me and two other guys I know' thing?
Posted by aloysius at April 22, 2003 07:27 PM |