Rick Santorum is coming under fire for some rather strong comments on homosexuality:
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.
First off, this was a very stupid thing for Santorum to say in today’s climate. Further, consensual adult sodomy is different from most of the acts on the list, given that most of the others are generally done without consent of effected third parties.
That said, I don’t think this statement rises to the level of idiocy of those that got Trent Lott fired as Majority Leader. The views expressed by Lott’s comments have been considered objectionable for decades. On the other hand, Santorum’s statement reflects a commonplace viewpoint among many if not most Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. Indeed, less than 10 years ago, it was almost certainly the majority opinion in the United States.
Thinking homosexuality is evil wasn’t even considered bigoted as recently as when I was an undergrad. Prominent black comedians such as Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, both of whom were obviously sensitive to issues of prejudice, routinely ridiculed homosexuals in their acts well into the 1980s. Hell, the leftist folk singer Arlo Guthrie used the word “faggots” in the Thanksgiving standard Alice’s Restaurant without any trace of irony. (Granted, that was 30-odd years ago, although the song still gets airplay.)
Morever, I think Santorum is probably right that, if states can’t outlaw sodomy, they can’t logically outlaw any type of consensual adult sex acts. From a theoretical standpoint, I’m not sure why sodomy is more objectionable than bigamy, adultery, or incest if all the parties are all consenting adults. This gets tricky in the cases of bigamy and adultery, as children, who can’t give informed consent, could conceivably be negatively impacted. But, if childless adults desire to engage in these practices with full consent and knowledge of the other parties involved, the objections are largely religious/philosophical rather than societal. Incest is obviously further beyond the pale, but only because of social conditioning. Certainly, different societies define the concept differently. But, aside from the possibility of pregnancy and the passing on of recessive genes, the objections to consensual adult incest is mainly along the lines of “Eeeeeeeeew.” (To which I add my wholehearted concurrence.)
Now, maybe the state shouldn’t be able to outlaw those acts either. My general libertarian bent on these matters leads me to think they shouldn’t. Further, I don’t think it’s wise public policy to enforce these laws, given that doing so diverts resources from more serious crimes. That said, it strikes me as within the constitutional purview of the state to impose moral constraints on its citizens so long as no rights specifically enumerated in the Constitution are trampled. Indeed, a major feature of our Federalist system is that it allows different localities to define those moral parameters differently.
(Hat tip to Bill Quick via Atrios)
