The Queer Views of Rick Santorum

 “Bring the past only if you are going to build from it.”

- Doménico Cieri Estrada

Those of you who aren’t following the United States presidential race may not be familiar with Rick Santorum. In order to save you time and limit my own personal biases, I will impartially copy and paste the Wiktionary definition for Santorum:

Santorum (noun, uncountable) - A frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal matter that is an occasional byproduct of anal sex. [from 21st c.]

Okay maybe it’s not impartial, but it is the Wiktionary definition for Santorum.

More specifically, Mr. Santorum was the republican candidate who had managed, for the past few months, to continually rain on Mitt Romney’s presidential parade. He won a number of primary elections and positioned himself as a serious contender in the 2012 election. Santorum has recently dropped out of the race, but his prolonged viability as a presidential candidate is too curious to ignore. Here is a quick fly by of his views.

Regarding higher education, Santorum stated during a speech on the election trail: “President Obama said he wants everybody in America to go to college… What a snob.” God forbid in an increasingly competitive global world, Barack Obama would like the young adults of America to avail themselves of the university system.

Santorum is against abortion in all cases, even in the event of rape.  His argument? “The right approach,” he said, “is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, a gift” [sic]. God does, after all, work in mysterious ways. Despite this defense for the sanctity of life, he is still in favor of capital punishment.

Perhaps most controversial are Santorum’s views on homosexuality. He opposes openly gay men and women serving in the military based on what he claims is in the best interest of national security. Surely if homosexuals were allowed to serve openly, American military might would soon be reduced to Elton John and pillow fights. On the campaign trail Santorum was asked whether this position tramples on the unalienable rights that the United States constitution holds sacred. He justifies his platform semantically, claiming that military service is not a right, but a privilege—a privilege, of course, to which only us heterosexuals are entitled.

He defends his other (and there are many) intolerant positions through questionable logic. When asked to justify his opposition on gay marriage, Santorum’s rationale was that no reasonable line could be drawn to limit the inevitable influx of atypical marriages. “You can imagine all the different types of marriage that would happen,” he said at a town hall meeting. Extending my imagination to the limits of its capacity, I can only come up with a few far-fetched ideas. Santorum on the other hand is much more creative about the likely consequences of relaxed constraints on traditional marriage.
Published in The Felix 

Toward the end of his candidacy, Santorum found himself clarifying a statement he made during an interview in April 2003 during which he stated: “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.”

Political commentators have since cited this sound bite as evidence that Santorum equates homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia— an allegation that he forcefully denies, emphasizing that he specifically excluded homosexuality from "those other things."

When you look at the quote, it’s true that he didn’t explicitly equate them. But why was he talking about them together in the first place? Is it necessary to emphasize that homosexuality is, in fact, distinguishable from child rape or sex with dogs?

Cognitive psychology conceives of the mind as a web of nodes and links. Nodes represent objects or concepts and links represent the strength of the association between different nodes. When a given node is activated electronic impulses are triggered that activate other nodes, thereby leading us to recall certain concepts that are, in our minds, associated. For instance, when I say renaissance painter you may think of Leonardo da Vinci. When I say footballer you may think of David Beckman. When I say Rick Santorum you may think of an unsavory frothy mixture.  

By distinguishing homosexuality from bestiality and pedophilia Santorum manages to give us a sneak peak into how his mind actually works. Boiled down and bereft of the subtle nuances of language that he uses for his defense, Santorum’s moral persuasion is clear. To him, homosexuality, bestiality and pedophilia are ultimately—to invoke the misused lingo of right-wing fundamentalists—abominations.

Santorum is, of course, himself a catholic fundamentalist, and his bigoted, antiquated ideas are based on the teachings of the bible. Today many of the faithful take a more flexible interpretation of the holy book, viewing it as malleable and understanding that its message is partly obscured by translation and the passage of more than 2000 years. However, more literal interpretations still abound, such as those espoused by Santorum. His intolerance is unwavering, because he believes the teachings of the bible to be unwavering— its message explicit and infallible.

Almost all other inquiries about our world are founded on the notion of perpetual improvement. Einstein built upon Newtown. Keynes built upon Ricardo, who built upon Smith. Erikson built upon Freud, who built upon classical philosophy... It is this pattern of standing on the shoulders of giants that leads to progress, that has brought us from cave dwellers to dwellers of homes with electricity and running water. Yet this pattern of improvement does not seem to apply to a fundamentalist understanding of the bible. For its content is undoubtedly divine and unquestionably absolute. Its inflexibility is not a weakness, but a defining characteristic of its enduring infallibility.

Conversely, a cornerstone of the scientific method is falsifiability: the rigorous endeavor of trying to prove an idea wrong in order to test its integrity. Through this method the red herrings are separated from veridical scientific discovery, bringing us progress. Nonetheless, many individuals still mistake blind faith for moral strength and perceive doubt as a weakness.

When did belief become more admirable than asking questions? Which bears more fruit? Which brought us inquisitions and witch trials and which brought us penicillin and electricity? Did it do us as a species any good that someone, somewhere, at sometime doubted that the earth was flat, or that stoning and crucifixion may be overkill for otherwise minor transgressions? Doubt is the central ingredient of improvement. Sure you can find quaint wisdom in the bible, but is it a singularly reliable source for answers to significant moral questions? Is the book that prescribes death for not observing the Sabbath a tenable moral compass for the 21^st century? Why are we seeking answers from people who didn’t have toilet paper?

Somehow vestiges from the past manage to linger. The Civil Rights Act wasn’t passed until 1964 in the United States. The arguments against it weren’t dissimilar to those being levied against the gay-rights movement today. In an interview with Chris Wallace, Mr. Santorum was asked if the following quote dove-tailed with his rationale behind why homosexuals shouldn’t be permitted to serve openly  in the military: “The army is not a sociological laboratory. Experimenting with army policy…would pose a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale and result in ultimate defeat.” When Santorum agreed that this quote sounded about right, Chris Wallace revealed its narrator, Colonel Eugene Householder, who was arguing against racial integration in the military.

In 2012, what on earth are we doing debating these things? Will our children not look back and find this as senseless and as bigoted as we now perceive those regarding racial integration to have been? What does Santorum’s viability as a presidential candidate say about our society?

Although moral absolutists still persist, many individuals, it seems, are becoming more open and understanding. This may be reflected in Santorum’s inability to win over the Catholic vote. In exit polling many Catholics have stated that despite agreeing with Rick Santorum’s moral views, they feel that voting for Mitt Romney, a more tolerant candidate, is in the best interest of the country. Whereas some in the catholic community have decried these compromises, those who have reached adulthood understand that give-and-take is an essential ingredient for living in a diverse society.

Santorum feels that moral issues are paramount. The real danger is that he doesn’t believe that his opinions are opinions, but instead perceives them to be undisputable truths relayed to him from divine providence, with whom he has a direct hotline. So with the support of God, he advances his convictions not as a bigot, but as a Christian missionary, professing with rigid certainty that equal rights for homosexuals will ultimately break apart families and threaten the very fabric of society. And he just can’t seem to understand the backlash against his tenets. In a heated forum at The Pennsylvania State University he asked: “So now I’m a bigot because I believe what the bible teaches?”

What do you think?