Originally appeared April 30, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press. This is a slightly revised version.
THE RECENT FLAP about anti-gay comments made by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., is misleading.
Santorum's remarks aren't just heinous because they smear gays and lesbians.
Sure, he did engage in obvious gay baiting, ingenuously comparing gay sex to bigamy, polygamy, adultery and uh, "man on dog."
But that's just garden-variety conservative bigotry. By saying such things, Santorum insured - intentionally or not - that his real agenda would be hidden by the ensuing controversy about whether his comments were anti-gay enough to force him to step down.
Certainly his comments are slurs on gays and lesbians. But he's a religious conservative, so that's not a surprise. What's really shocking is that Santorum didn't attack only gays and lesbians. He attacked every adult woman and man in America.
Because what he really said in that Associated Press interview is that he's against an American right to privacy.
That's right. Santorum wants to peer into your bedroom. Or at least he wants the government to regulate what happens there - whether you're gay or straight.
As Santorum himself says, he has no problems with gays. What he doesn't like is sex, unless it happens with a man, a woman and a wedding ring.
This is what he said to an apparently shocked AP reporter in an April 7 interview published last week, when asked about his views of the scandals that occurred within the Catholic Church:
"Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get...."
But it gets worse. In the transcript of the interview, provided by AP, Santorum then made a reference to Lawrence vs. Texas, the sodomy case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
He said, "...And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."
I won't get into his fallacy of comparing consensual sex with adultery, etc. But notice Santorum didn't say, "right to consensual gay sex." He said "right to consensual sex." And I don't think it's a slip of the tongue. I think that Santorum, and others like him, really mean it. To them, sex and sexuality in any form other than a rigid husband-and-wife definition is dangerous. If a sexual relationship isn't solemnized by the state or the church (and preferably both) than it has no right to exist.
Since just over half of Americans are married, Santorum is basically saying that the rest of us should be celibate. Not just gays and lesbians - everybody.
As Tom Ferrick, Jr., of the Philadelphia Inquirer, noted in a column, Santorum doesn't like the right to privacy because the Supreme Court has (with a few notable exceptions, like Bowers vs. Hardwick) fairly consistently ruled that an American's right to make his or her own decisions about his or her body and relationships surpasses the religious, conservative impulse to regulate morality.
Hence, abortion is legal, as is contraception. African-Americans can marry Caucasians without fear of fines or imprisonment. Children aren't compelled to attend government schools. People can buy pornography for their personal use. We have much of the personal freedoms we take for granted because the state assumes that Americans have the right to privacy (well, at least the state assumed that before U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft came along).
Yet Santorum went on to explain that the right to privacy is a dangerous fiction. "It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution," he said.
"...You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy families.... The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire."
Santorum and other advocates of banishing the right to privacy don't explain how regulating personal, consensual behavior at this level will strengthen families. They just assume it will. They don't see that putting the finer points of individual and family life in control of the state practically ensures unhappiness - and pushes us closer to a dictatorship than to a democracy.
That's why Santorum is frightening. He's not just after gays and lesbians - if he were, maybe enough lobbying, positive contact, and pro-gay polling in his home state would eventually being him around. He's after all of us who want to right to be in charge of our own lives and relationships.