A WHOLE LOTT OF NONSENSE: Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum this week pulled a Trent Lott- although the outcome in this case is likely to be different because of the double standard in which stupid gay-related comments have a much different threshold than stupid, racially insensitive comments. The third-ranking Republican in the US Senate is on hot water over the remarks- and were it up to me, it'd be twice as hot.
Santorum, in an interview with an AP reporter on the subject of the case about to go before the Supreme Court that may strike down Texas' sodomy law, compared consensual homosexual sex between adults with incest, child molestation, beastiality, and a variety of other offenses- and also argued that the states should be allowed to forcibly prevent people from committing sodomy.
It's moments like this which make me reiterate my stance that no matter who much I flirt with neocon-ism on various issues, I will never, ever, EVER become a Republican. I can't in good conscience be on the same side as the pro-Confederate flag people, the pro-segregation people, the Christian Right people, and the gays-are-going-to-hell people. Many in the blogosphere have pointed out that while all kinds of Americans were pulled rightward by the War on Terror and the war in Iraq, stuff like Santorum-slamming-the-homos is liable to bring 'em all back.
I wondered all day how Fox News would manage to spin this, and in prime time I got my answer: Bill O'Reilly used his talking points memo and two interviews to trash the straw man known as "the witchhunters," who are supposedly more to blame for this mess than Santorum himself. And Sean Hannity (unchallenged, as usual, by Alan Colmes) used the bullshit, nonsensical argument that Santorum and every other Republican on Earth must forever be absolved from any controversial statement, just because Robert Byrd was in the Klan. Didn't Hannity learn the hard way when he used the same argument, unsuccessfully, as one of the world's last defenders of Trent Lott?
Andrew Sullivan, as he was with Lott, has been great on this issue- making the argument that not only were Santorum's comments offensive and bigoted- but they were unconservative. How can someone who claims to stand for "smaller government" advocate policing sexual activity inside people's homes?