In Defense Of Rick Santorum
By John Hawkins (04/27/03)
The vast majority of the criticism that Rick Santorum is currently receiving is unfair and in some cases is designed to deliberately distort what he actually said. Since his critics are continuing to pile on, I thought he deserved a stronger defense than the one I gave him earlier this week.
To begin with, Santorum was airing a very valid concern in the interview that got him into trouble. If the sodomy law in question is overturned by the Supreme Court based on the "right to privacy", then it's very possible that a number of other sex acts might be defended using the exact same argument. I'd say bestiality and incest between adults would probably fall into that category. That would not be a problem if the law were rescinded locally, but if the Supreme Court shoots it down because of the "right to privacy" then it does have wider implications.
Now Santorum went farther than that by saying that if the Supreme Court were to strike down this law then it would open up a legal excuse for, "bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery," etc, that would be protected under the same ruling. Personally, I think that's a stretch, but that doesn't mean that lawyers won't one day make that very case, perhaps even successfully, in a court of law. As Americans have found out much to their dismay, tenuous arguments based on these sorts of precedents can at times win the day in our system of justice.
Other people have taken shots at Santorum for saying that the, "right to privacy…doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution." Well, I agree with him and that's coming from someone who is against the sodomy law discussed in this case as well as a National ID card, stoplight cameras, the Total Information Awareness project, public video surveillance, and any sort of mandatory implantation of chips into the human body, all because of privacy concerns.
The word "privacy" never appears in the US Constitution and the CONSTITUTIONAL "right to privacy" is in my opinion nothing but a legal fiction cobbled together from the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments by activist judges. I do believe that Americans have a "right to privacy", but in truth we shouldn't have a CONSTITUTIONAL "right to privacy" unless we amend the Constitution to say so (which is something I would support by the way). Just wishing that the "right to privacy" was spelled out in the Constitution does not make it so.
A number of people have also been claiming that Santorum wants to put "the government into your bedroom." Well, that's true. In fact, most people want the government in our bedrooms, at least to a certain extent, whether they realize it or not. If you don't want people engaging in incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, rapes, etc, then you do want the government in people's bedrooms.
This is one of those issues where the American public (myself included), wants to have it both ways. Just look at what I wrote in the first time I talked about what Rick Santorum said,
"I'm not in favor of sodomy laws, because I think the government has no business peering into the bedroom of your "castle" to see who you're having sex with and what positions the two of you are getting into."
But, what if there's an adult and a child involved, incest, or bestiality going on? Well, then I, like Rick Santorum and the overwhelming majority of Americans, do want the government to get involved.
Santorum has also been criticized for not approving of the gay lifestyle, but again way too much is being made of his comments. Some people are taking the legal argument Santorum made and saying that he tried to compare homosexuality to incest and bestiality. He did make that comparison, but in a legal sense, not in a moral one. In fact, Santorum explicitly said there was no comparison between homosexuality and bestiality near the end of the interview. Here's the most relevant thing Santorum said about homosexuality...
"I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual."
Some people apparently have a big problem with that. If so, then they have a problem with just about every Christian church in America that preaches "love the sinner & hate the sin" and a large majority of Americans who agree for the most part with what Santorum said. There's a reason why the vast majority of Americans don't support gay teachers, gay adoption, gay Scoutmasters, etc. Of course, those same people probably wouldn't favor allowing porn stars or people who are heavily into BDSM to be teachers, adopt kids, or be Scoutmasters either. The American public may tolerate aberrant lifestyles, but they don't approve of them.
So not only do I not support removing Santorum from his leadership post as some critics have demanded, I don't think he has anything to apologize for. As a matter of fact, I think Olympia Snowe & Lincoln Chaffee should have explained that Santorum's comments were taken out of context instead of criticizing him and the people who are deliberately twisting the Senator's words for no other reason than to demagogue him should be ashamed of themselves.
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