Posted on 04/21/2003 2:39:07 PM PDT by Jean S
WASHINGTON (AP) - Gay-rights groups, fuming over Sen. Rick Santorum's comparison of homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery, urged Republican leaders Monday to consider removing the Pennsylvania lawmaker from the GOP Senate leadership.
A coalition of groups in Washington and Pennsylvania compared Santorum's remarks to those by those last December by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott about Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist campaign for the presidency. Shortly afterward, Lott was forced to resign as Republican Senate leader.
Santorum is chairman of the GOP conference in the Senate, third in his party's leadership, behind Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
"We're urging the Republican leadership to condemn the remarks. They were stunning in their sensitivity, and they're the same types of remarks that sparked outrage toward Sen. Lott," said David Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay advocacy organization. "We would ask that the leadership reconsider his standing within the conference leadership."
In an interview with The Associated Press, Santorum criticized homosexuality while discussing a pending Supreme Court case over a Texas sodomy law.
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) 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, R-Pa., said in the interview, published Monday.
Santorum's spokeswoman did not have an immediate comment to the criticism from the gay rights groups. The White House did not immediately return a call seeking comment, and a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Frist declined comment.
Lott resigned his post in December after making remarks at a 100th birthday celebration for Thurmond that were widely considered racially insensitive and condemned by the White House. Lott later apologized.
Among the groups condemning Santorum's remarks were the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, the Pennsylvania Log Cabin Republicans, OutFront, and the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition.
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On the Net:
Sen. Rick Santorum: http://santorum.senate.gov/
Human Rights Campaign: http://www.hrc.org/
AP-ES-04-21-03 1715EDT
There is no law in the United States that treats gays and straights differently.
What is conservative about the government regulating what two people do in their own home?
You're confusing conservatism with libertarianism. The US since its inception has had laws regulating sexual behavior. Conservatism says don't change those laws without good reason to expect doing so will improve society. Libertarianism says such laws are ideologically unsound.
Along with that constitutional support of religion comes a bunch of negatives. There are many things we cannot do as Christians (Muslims, Jews, etc..).
Other than the Texas situation, name another jailing of someone for being gay? 99.9% of the gay issues we are arguing about is whether or not the rest of us can be forced to approve. It's our freedom we are talking about.
Santorum was making a statement about whether homosexuality is a constitutional right or whether it is a liberty that can be regulated on a state level. If it is a constitutional right then so are all the things Santorum listed -- whether you think those things are a worthy comparison or not.
Yes, but Marc Racicot is too damn stupid to realize, apparently, that the HRC is joined at the hip with radical abortion supporters, and are just carrying water for the Socialist alliance. Rick Santorum is the #1 reason why we will have a partial-birth ban signed into law this year--by far the most eloquent debater on the subject--and from a critical electorate state to boot.
That this p.r. will be even discussed by the RNC and its cowardly lion Racicot is pathetic. If anyone should be dumped it is he, if only for betraying the party by refusing to unseat Max Baucus in the last election.
They don't want equality, which they already have. They want special rights, including stifling the rights of others, in the name of "tolerance". They should start showing some tolerance for traditional value, IMHO,
The only correction that needs to be made is that since homosexuality is claimed to be a "SEXUAL ORIENTATION," then bigamy/polygamy might NOT be included since they just involve multiple-partner marriage.
The "SEXUAL ORIENTATION" of PEDOPHILIA, however, WOULD be protected.
He misses the boat on polygamy. A much stronger biblical case can be made for a right to polygamy, than homosexuality. Some of the patriarchs were apparently blessed in their polygamy, whereas homosexuality was always regarded as an abomination.
But polygamy won't fly in today's political climate because it offends feminists. Then again, so does heterosexuality of any kind.
Not enough.
...God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.... Romans 1:26-31
No thanks. You walk a mile in those shoes, if you can stand the stench!
That is certainly not true. I'll give you two examples from the many available.
First, Nebraska has a hate crimes law that treats gay victims differently from straight victims.
Second, the U.S. has the famous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that expels gays from the military. Under that law, if a gay persons says that he is gay, then he is expelled from the military. But if a straight person (poor Klinger from M.A.S.H.!) says that he is gay, he is not expelled. Just saying that you are gay is not enough to get expelled. You actually have to be found to be gay, even if you have never engaged nor ever intend to engage in homosexual activities.
What is conservative about the government regulating what three people do in their own home?
I mean, rather than just whining, why don't these groups debate Sen. Santorum honestly? It seems to me that it is awfully hard to defend laws against polygamy (involving consenting adults, obviously) if you allow homosexual "marriage."
Judeo-Christian belief: The real Counter Culture!
I think the gays are being very insensitive, openly implying there's something wrong with bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.
Awefully un PC of them, if you ask me.
Slavery was also not prohibited in the Bible. Though likewise, the Bible never calls slavery good.
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