Santorum: Homosexual Acts Are a Crime, but Maybe Not Quite As Bad As Molesting Children

Rick Santorum's comments about gay marriage
in a 2003
interview with the Associated Press have been getting a lot of
mileage lately, but they are often misreported. In a January 4

profile of Santorum, for example, New York
Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg describes the
notorious quote this way:

He once offhandedly invoked bestiality in arguing that states
should have the right to regulate homosexual acts. "That is not to
pick on homosexuality," he said. "It's not, you know, man on child,
man on dog." 

That makes it sound as if Santorum was saying homosexuality is
not as bad as pedophilia or bestiality, which is the interpretation
he embraced in a January 4 interview
with CNN's John King:

King: How do you connect homosexuality to
bestiality? And you went on in that interview to talk about bigamy.
Connect those dots.
Santorum: Hold on a second, John. Read the
quote. I said it's not, it is not; I didn't say
it is. It says it's not. I'm trying to understand
what you're trying to make the point. I said it's
not those things. I didn't connect them; I
specifically excluded them.

Nice try, but the relevant passage (which King read) does not
support that gloss:

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution
of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because
society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future
of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous
relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not
ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on
homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or
whatever the case may be. It is one thing. 

In context, the it clearly refers to marriage, not
to homosexuality. Santorum is saying marriage traditionally has
excluded certain relationships, including those between people of
the same sex, between adults and children, and between people and
animals. He is not necessarily saying these relationships are
morally equivalent, although that seems to be the implication. In
any event, Santorum makes it pretty clear in the same interview
that he thinks sex between two men is bad enough that it should be
a crime:

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. It
all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't
exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution; this right
that was created, it was created in Griswold ?
Griswold was the contraceptive case ? and abortion. And
now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out,
the more you ? this freedom actually intervenes and affects the
family. 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. Whether it's
polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those
things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional
family....
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. 

Here Santorum is not just objecting, on constitutional grounds,
to the Supreme Court's interference with a state's decision to
criminalize homosexual sex; he is defending such laws, saying
sodomy "destroys the basic unit of our society." Evidently he does
not think that position will help him win the Republican
nomination. As with his bizarre
denial that the federal government imprisons nonviolent drug
offenders (with families!), Santorum is not defending his
principles; he is trying to weasel out of their implications.

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