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Santorum Forun Don’t ask, and I won’t tell you that Rick Santorum is my senator. I’m on the other end of the state, and I like it that way. Commenting on a challenge to a Texas law banning sodomy that could, in fact, spice up the Bush twins’ spring break, Santorum compared gay sex to incest, polygamy, and child rape. After ironically putting his foot in his mouth, the senator went on to say he doesn’t dislike homosexuals, only homosexual acts. Substitute in word pairs like Jews-Jewish and Latinos-Latino, and you’ll quickly see why Rick Santorum has a public relations problem the size of John Holmes’s unit. While some political analysts write off the whole incident as a matter of excessive candor at best and sheer stupidity at worst, some of us know better. Santorum is engaging in the age-old American tradition of nudge-nudge-wink-wink politics. The strategy goes something like this: You make an outlandish, virtually indefensible statement seemingly off-the-cuff knowing in advance you’ll have to make a formal, insincere retraction, but that the residue will be a firming up of your silent, extremist political base. Trent Lott tried a little nudge-nudge-wink-wink deal back in December and realized later he used too much nudge-nudge and not enough wink-wink. Right about now, Rick Santorum should be taping his windows, not for anthrax but for the stones he is throwing at a sizeable chunk of the American populace. As we diehard heterosexuals know all too well, about half of our own sexual acts are somewhat unsavory. On a good night, two-thirds. Santorum is now one stone away from having Larry Flynt sicced on him, at which point the senator from Pennsylvania will find himself so deep in Bob Barr land, his political consultants will be putting together an exploratory committee to size up a 2012 run for Allegheny County solicitor. Those of us looking for an alternative to Dr. Laura would like to ask this new self-proclaimed expert on sexual relativism a thing or two. Now that he has casually compared run-of-the-mill, nothing-good-on-TV-tonight gay sex with the kind of crimes against humanity which have the Catholic Church coughing up billions, we the naïve voting public seek further enlightenment. How does gay incest rank next to straight incest? Gay versus straight bestiality? Straight versus bisexual polygamy? Hermaphroditic masturbation versus all other kinds? These are the kinds of abstract questions Rick Santorum must have had time to ponder after voting to give himself a pay raise in December and then going home early to avoid a vote on extending unemployment benefits. Essentially, he satisfied himself, then screwed everyone else. Sodomy laws are the Jim Crow laws of the new millenium, and their continued presence on our books is particularly embarrassing at a time when we are posing as a beacon of freedom around the world. We don’t have to hate right-wing Republicans, just right-wing Republican ideas. It’s time for the Log Cabin Republicans to upgrade to Libertarian solariums. Folks, you don’t have to go on endlessly, dutifully defending your so-called family. Get your own apartment and visit on holidays. It’s times like these you wonder where Santorum and his lot are headed with bizarre, anachronistic policy statements like this one. An unnamed source high up in the Pentagon has reported that planning has already begun for a US invasion of New York’s West Village. High ranking officials at CENTCOM claim to have proof the West Village possesses paraphernalia of erotic pleasure. Meanwhile, moderates are asking the administration to let the vice squad do their jobs. Military strategists are predicting light resistance, but West Village loyalists warn that this conflict will make Stonewall look like a day at Club Med. Yet something even more perverse is going on here. Somewhere between the 1981 firing of the air traffic controllers and 9/11, Republicans became advocates of big government. Turns out big government has such a great track record of policing our borders, controlling the use of narcotics, and eliminating corporate fraud, Senator Santorum and company have decided to unleash this holy, infallible force on condos, trailer parks, and waterbeds everywhere. The Taliban would be proud. But in this case, as that great American liberal Ronald Reagan once stated so eloquently, government isn’t the solution. Government is the problem. Click here to rant back. |