GOP leader compares gay sex to incest
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Critics call for resignation of Santorum, who says comments not 'statement on individual lifestyles'
Sen. Rick Santorum
By LAURA DOUGLAS-BROWN
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate's third-highest ranking Republican issued a statement Tuesday charging that an Associated Press article was "misleading" when it quoted him comparing consensual gay sex to incest.
The move did little to placate most gay groups, including Log Cabin Republicans, which demanded Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) either "fully apologize" or step down from his leadership post. But the Republican Unity Coalition, a group that bills itself for "gay and straight 'Big Tent' Republicans," issued a statement that took issue with some criticism of Santorum.
"My comments should not be misconstrued in any way as a statement on individual lifestyles," Santorum said, one day after the AP published an article quoting him urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Texas state law banning homosexual sodomy.
"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," Santorum said in the interview, taped April 7 and published April 21.
"All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family," Santorum said. "And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution."
Santorum chairs the Senate Republican Conference, placing him third in his party's leadership, behind Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
His remarks sparked a predictable firestorm from Democrats and gay rights groups on both sides of the political aisle, but they have so far generated little comment from Republican Party leaders.
"We are expecting an apology, and a full one, and expect that and his dedication to moving forward will allow Sen. Santorum to stay in the party leadership," Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the national gay GOP group Log Cabin Republicans, told the Blade on Tuesday after Santorum issued his clarification statement.
"If he does not [fully apologize], we would ask for him to step down," Guerriero said.
Santorum told Fox News Tuesday night that he has nothing for which to apologize.
"I do not need to give an apology," he said. "I think this is a legitimate public policy discussion."
Meanwhile, the Republican Unity Coalition, a group formed by gay Republicans with ties to the president, issued a statement on Wednesday that criticized Santorum's views as "flat-out wrong" but "well within bounds of speech and propriety."
The statement, released by RUC leader Charles Francis, a gay Texan who has been described as close to President Bush, said it was "false and harmful" for Santorum to compare gay sex to bigamy, incest and polygamy, but added, "There is a difference between being wrong and being accused of all kinds of bigotry."
"Good people with animus toward no one can and will disagree," concludes the RUC statement.
Silence from GOP leaders
As furor over Santorum's remarks grew early this week, critics compared his comments to those of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who lost his post as Senate majority leader after appearing to support racial segregation.
At a Dec. 5 event celebrating the 100th birthday of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), Lott praised the retiring senator's 1948 run for president representing the segregationist Dixiecrat platform.
"Santorum's statements mark the second time in recent months that a Republican leader has made comments marginalizing or attacking an entire segment of the population," the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay political group, said in a statement condemning Santorum's "deeply discriminatory" remarks.
HRC called on Republican leaders "to take quick and decisive action to repudiate Sen. Santorum's remarks."
Yet GOP officials had little to say about Santorum's statements.
The White House did not respond to interview requests on the issue by press time.
Asked at an April 22 press briefing whether President Bush agrees with Santorum's comments, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer demurred.
"I have not seen the entire context of the interview, and two, I haven't talked to the president about it. So I really don't have anything to offer beyond that," Fleischer said.
Another senior White House official praised Santorum in the original Associated Press article that included the inflammatory comments.
White House Political Director Ken Mehlman called Santorum "one of the original compassionate conservatives."
"The people of Pennsylvania, no matter who they are or where they're from, understand how hard he's working for them, understand that he has a philosophy that is good for them, and that will help improve their state."
When Lott made his controversial racial remarks, Bush publicly spoke out against the senator's sentiments a week later, but only two days after the controversy hit the national press.
Lott made his comments Dec. 5; they were first reported in the New York Times on Dec. 10.
The White House initially said it accepted Lott's apology, but in a public speech Dec. 12, Bush said Lott's comment "do not reflect the spirit of our country."
Fleischer said later the same day that Bush "doesn't think Trent Lott needs to resign," yet the Mississippi senator — who had also compared gays to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs in 1998 —gave up his leadership post on Dec. 21. Press reports at the time indicated that the president privately approved of the switch in leadership.
Santorum should be given time to correct his comments before the president steps in, Log Cabin leaders said.
"I think the White House is showing appropriate political and professional courtesy in giving him 48 hours to respond himself," Guerriero said. "It shouldn't take the White House to have to scold United States senators about staying within decent parameters in their public comments."
Other leading Republicans have also declined to criticize Santorum.
A spokesperson for Frist, who became Senate majority leader in the wake of Lott's resignation, initially refused comment on Santorum's statements to the AP.
A day later, Frist called Santorum "a consistent voice for inclusion and compassion in the Republican Party and in the Senate."
"To suggest otherwise is just politics," Frist told the Associated Press.
'Woefully inadequate'?
Santorum, currently serving his second term as a senator from Pennsylvania after four years in the House of Representatives, has a reputation for focusing on what social conservatives call "family" issues, including a ban on late-term abortions and tax exemptions for donations to religious charities.
But he has also reached out to gay Republicans.
"I met with him as recently as earlier this year to discuss the president's global and domestic HIV/AIDS initiatives," Guerriero said. "He has also met with Log Cabin Republican members as a group during our last convention in Washington, D.C., to discuss hate crimes, taxation and other issues he was working with."
Kevin Ivers, who served as public affairs director at Log Cabin before leaving the group last summer to form his own public relations firm, said Santorum's staff repeatedly reached out to the gay GOP group for support in winning approval for President Bush's judicial nominees.
Last spring, Ivers said, Santorum met with about a dozen Log Cabin leaders. During the meeting, Ivers said he asked Santorum to support a hate crimes bill pushed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
The Hatch bill is viewed as a competing measure to a hate crimes bill proposed by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Kennedy's bill would add categories of sexual orientation, gender and disability to existing federal hate crime law and expand the federal government's ability to prosecute such cases.
Hatch has said that he supports parts of Kennedy's bill that authorize federal prosecution of anti-gay hate crimes, but criticized Kennedy's bill for going too far in allowing federal intervention in cases where state or local law enforcement officials prosecute hate crimes.
During the meeting with Log Cabin, according to Ivers, Santorum said he agreed with Hatch's strategy on the bill — a point of view Ivers said Santorum contradicts in his latest statements.
"In the hate crimes debate, Hatch's whole argument was all about restricting federal power," Ivers said. "For Santorum to agree with that, and now be making arguments about preserving [government] power to bust down the bedroom door and arrest people, is just ridiculous."
Last month, HRC praised Santorum, the leading Senate backer for President Bush's faith-based initiative, for agreeing to an amendment that the group said will reduce the chance for groups receiving public funding to discriminate based on religion — often used as justification for bias based on sexual orientation.
Still, Santorum rated only 14 out of 100 on HRC's last congressional score card on gay issues. He has not co-sponsored bills to add sexual orientation to federal hate crimes laws or ban anti-gay job discrimination, and he earned points on only one issue: voluntarily agreeing to a sexual orientation non-discrimination policy for his office.
Nevertheless, Santorum said in his clarification statement that he is "a firm believer that all are equal under the Constitution."
"When discussing the pending Supreme Court Case Lawrence vs. Texas, my comments were specific to the right to privacy and the broader implications of a ruling on other state privacy laws," he said.
"In the interview, I expressed the same concern as many constitutional scholars, and discussed arguments put forward by the state of Texas, as well as Supreme Court justices. If such a law restricting personal conduct is held unconstitutional, so could other existing state laws."
Guerriero called Santorum's statement "woefully inadequate."
"Sen. Santorum has a leadership role in coalition building as the Senate GOP conference chairman. You don't build coalitions by divisive and mean spirited statements," the Log Cabin leader said in a press statement.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this summer in Lawrence vs. Texas, a challenge to the Texas sodomy law that could have broad implications for gay rights.
Battle lines drawn
Along with Log Cabin and HRC, other gay rights groups quickly condemned Santorum's remarks, while conservative groups rushed to defend the senator.
The Family Research Council denounced HRC and Log Cabin's "smear tactics." The gay groups are "attacking" Santorum to "intimidate defenders of marriage and silence critics of the homosexual political agenda," said FRC President Ken Connor.
Leaders with LLEGÓ, the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Organization, sent a letter to Frist and Congressional Hispanic Conference Chair Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) calling for Santorum's removal as a party leader.
His comments "are an affront to the growing number of same-sex families raising children in loving and caring homes," wrote Martin Ornelas-Quintero, LLEGÓ executive director.
Prominent Democrats — including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and at least four 2004 presidential candidates — also denounced Santorum's remarks and called on Republicans to remove him from leadership.
"The silence with which President Bush and the Republican Party leadership have greeted Sen. Santorum's remarks is deafening," said Howard Dean, one of a crowded field of Democrats vying to challenge Bush in 2004.
Dean, who as Vermont governor signed a bill into law creating civil unions for gay couples, said the silence "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."
In a statement issued Wednesday, Dean called on Santorum to resign his leadership post.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), another Democrat running for president, also used Santorum's remarks — which he said "take us backwards in America" — as an opportunity to criticize Republican leadership.
"The White House speaks the rhetoric of compassionate conservatism, but they're silent while their chief lieutenants make divisive and hurtful comments that have no place in our politics," Kerry said.
Democratic presidential contender Sen. John Edwards (R-N.C.) issued a statement calling the comments "disturbing and inappropriate."
"It is unfortunate that this prejudice still exists in this country," he said.
Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he was "disappointed with the Republican leadership's insensitivity and blatant disregard for the rights of millions of Americans."
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also called on Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the state's senior senator, to denounce Santorum, but Specter declined.
"I have known Rick Santorum for the better part of two decades, and I can say with certainty he is not a bigot," Specter said in a statement. |
