I'd have to say this article by Sullivan is one of the better articles I have read recently on any subject. http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20030422
Well, of course this is Andrew's bread and butter issue. He's probably the most literate, articulate and credible gay advocate in America. Before you get too carried away, I suggest you check in with him or one of the other bloggers today who are pointing out that, incredibly, the AP reporter actually DOCTORED THE QUOTE to include the word "GAY" when Santorum never said it. Incredible. Beyond that, however, Santorum is making the same points constitutional scholars are now making in that Texas v. Whoever case in the Supreme Court. He is absolutely correct in saying that the so-called Right of Privacy has been ginned up out of whole cloth by judicial mandate. Sullivan wants to argue that these rights are now "firmly established" because he WANTS them "firmly established". Others think an incorrect interpretation of the Constitution, or a Court override of the Constitution, does not make something good law or even respectable law. That said, I tend to agree with Sullivan, but that's not the point. Nobody is suggesting that anybody be denied their civil rights here. Santorum is a very conservative guy from a very conservative state who was elected by some very conservative people to represent their point of view, and that is what he is doing. Go ahead. Be gay. I don't care. But don't claim that your civil rights are being violated because I personally find the thought of blowing another guy repulsive. I'm allowed to feel that way. I'm just not allowed to discriminate against you for it, and that's as it should be. Santorum is speaking for a lot of people here, maybe, even probably, a majority. His other point is very well taken: if you say that nobody can pass a law restricting "private consensual acts" then you have allowed one hell of a lot of stuff which nobody, including Andrew Sullivan, is in favor of: incest, polygamy, even bestiality if you can convince somebody that the cow doesn't mind. (I'm kidding, I'm kidding) States have sodomy laws because the people of mthat state WANT sodomy laws. No secret cabal of moralists is plotting against them,. It's what they want. That said, sodomy laws are unenforceable, even counterproductive, and are relics of a bygone day. But again, we're stuck with what the court says rather than writing a specific law, because elected officials know their constituents don't WANT to legalize every sexual practice on earth. It's not Santorum's fault.
Hmmm...strange work by the AP there, but not surprising. The lady (3stripe) mentioned to me that she also heard the quote on the news with Dan rather and he also used the word "gay", whether or not he was reading from the AP release or not I do not know. I sure wish that I could find a transcript of the actual questions and answers that Santorum was a part of here, that would likely clear up quite a bit. Now you say sodomy laws are unenforcable, which I agree with, and you also say people of some States want them which I also agree with. You also say they are relics, and I agree with that also, but that part really doesn't matter. I wonder to myself and I guess out loud here what the role of the people's represenatives should be in a case like this, if the people of a state want an unenforcable law on the books (like this sodomy law) should the represenatives just bow to the will of the people and have their on the books just for show or for their voting record. Or should they stand up and say, "You know, regardless of whether I agree with this law or not, its an unforceable law and a waste of time to discuss it" That may alienate some constituents and may not be good politics but should be what happens in such situations. Just my opinion. edit: wow. I just read a transcript of the interview and it reads like a college freshman is interviewing Santorum. Not pretty. Yeah, the AP definately doctored the quotes, but Santorum did say some stuff that could definately ruffle feathers.
You mentioned awhile back the whole Sullivan/TNR deal. You're seeing the p[roblem on his website. For the thrid day, the entire thing is rants about the gay rights issue. I have always copntended that most people just don't care that much, for better or for worse. As for this whole Santorum thing, it won't go away soon because the media don't WANT it to go away. They've been embarassed by the war (notice how everybody now says : "Well of course there wasn't ever a chance of us not winning easily..." which is horsecrap: remember how Iraqis were like the Russians whop hated Stalin but hated Germany more, how Saddam was going to unleash all those chemical weapons, how our force was too small, how our planners were out of touch, how we were going to have to fight house-to-house in Baghdad, how it would be Stalingrad all over again, how it would take months and months and we might never get there in the end because international pressure would force us to stop slaughtering babies? Remember?) and now think they have something even better than an Iraqi museum which has been closed of ryears and years and which apparently was looted by the Baathists months ago. Can we go back and point out the anti-Semi\etic bigoted comments of various DEMOCRATS prove the their party is the party of Adolf Hitler? Just the media getting some back here.
At least he's (Sullivan) half-assedly trying to convince people that he's all worked up not just cause it's a gay rights issue, but also a privacy issue. Like you (I think) I don't really buy that being his reason. And like you I don't think that so many people care.
I'm sorry, but is this what the right has come to? Everytime someone says something stupid you have to blame it on the liberal media or better yet a grand conspiracy? At some point someone has got to say, "Yeah it was pretty dumb of Santorum to imply that those who have gay sex in the privacy of their homes should be incriminated. And it was ridiculous to bust out the man on dog comment" But that is too much pride for the right to swallow, so instead we have comments like this... I can only think of one reason. And that is, for all his preoccupation with gays and lesbians-and what they do at home, and how it shouldn't be tolerated, and his seeming determination to send them back into the closet-Santorum is a closet case of a different kind: he's a closet Democrat. That's right, he's a Carville-ite partisan sent in to wreck-or at least tear a wing off-the Bush coalition. http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-042503B Pretty unbelivable. At some point I hope they are mature enough to admit that their boy fukked up pretty bad here.
Despondent over the success of the war in Iraq, liberals tried to cheer themselves up with the politics of personal destruction – their second favorite hobby after defending Saddam Hussein. Responding to the question of whether the Supreme Court should hold sodomy to be a fundamental constitutional right, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum made the blindingly obvious point that a general right to engage in consensual sex would logically include adultery, polygamy and any number of sex acts prohibited by the states. For the limited purpose of attacking Santorum, liberals agreed to stipulate that adultery is bad. After spending all of 1998 ferociously defending adultery as something "everyone" does and "everyone" lies about, liberals claimed to be shocked to the core that anyone would compare homosexuality to such a morally black sin as adultery. Ann Coulter today.
It's sentances like that which make it nearly impossible to take anything Ann Coulter says seriously. It's as if she has never had an actual conversation with a "liberal". Instead of choosing to actual add something creative or constructive to a dialogue she chooses to go the shock route and attempt to get people to say something equally outlandish back. I have yet to meet any liberal "despondent" over the fact that Saddam is not still in power and I surely have never met one who defended him either. The sad thing is neither has Ann. The sadder thing is she has to become the Howard Stern of politics because she really doesn't have anything to offer in way of dialogue.
So is this the sort of snobbery that the left is accused of, looking down on their constituency? More gems from Santorum... Melina Waldo showed U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum a picture of her 31-year-old gay son. But Santorum, she said, barely glanced at it. "I wanted to touch his heart; I wanted to make him understand why I was upset," she said, explaining she had been trying to appeal to him as one parent to another. The parents who met with the embattled senator expressed hurt over his remarks. But rather than listening to how they felt, Santorum "kept referring to the law of the land," recalled Fran Kirschner, who heads the Philadelphia chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gays. "He kept lecturing us on the right to privacy, and [told us] 'You don't know the law,' " said Waldo, who is involved with the Catholic Parents Network, a support group for Catholic parents of gays. So he's talking down to them and refusing to apologize....Maybe they are right, maybe he is a democrat in disguise.... http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/5776137.htm