The two-party system of sexual repression
On the margin
Yelena Shagall
Issue date: 5/6/03 Section: Opinions
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It didn't take too long for feisty Democrats to latch onto Sen. Rick Santorum's notorious - and seemingly nonsensical - remarks as a means to "expose" the GOP's commitment to intolerance and homophobia. Of course, certain factions of it haven't done much to help.
But if the handling of Santorum's commentary has exposed anything, it has demonstrated the hypocrisy, ineptitude and underhanded maneuvering I've come to expect from Democrats.
Make no mistake. I'm not defending Santorum's idiocy. The average 5-year-old demonstrates more logical reasoning than Santorum showed in his interview, which reached its pinnacle when he equated homosexuality with the Catholic Church scandal because the priestly offenders, all Catholic, were committing "homosexual acts."
Of course, this means because rape is generally committed by men against women - a clearly "heterosexual" act - all straight men should be equated with rapists. And Santorum, being a Catholic heterosexual male, must therefore consider himself a child-molesting rapist. Impressive for a college graduate.
Yet while Santorum provided an apparently endless plethora of absurdities, the Democrats, including our beloved Howard Dean, focused on the comparison between bigamy, polygamy and incest to nontraditional sex.
Yes, the outrage, to think someone could make a comparison between the illegality of nontraditional sex (essentially all incest is) and nontraditional marital structures. It seems many of Santorum's critics are perfectly content to legislate consensual sexuality as long as the legal litmus test is set by their conception of what constitutes acceptable sexual activity.
With such duplicity on their side, certain Democrats intensified their efforts to promote themselves as courageous fighters of the "bigoted" Republicans.
So, where were these courageous Democrats before the Santorum debacle? Because, of course, the senator wasn't attempting to introduce new legislation - he was defending legislation already implemented.
But if the handling of Santorum's commentary has exposed anything, it has demonstrated the hypocrisy, ineptitude and underhanded maneuvering I've come to expect from Democrats.
Make no mistake. I'm not defending Santorum's idiocy. The average 5-year-old demonstrates more logical reasoning than Santorum showed in his interview, which reached its pinnacle when he equated homosexuality with the Catholic Church scandal because the priestly offenders, all Catholic, were committing "homosexual acts."
Of course, this means because rape is generally committed by men against women - a clearly "heterosexual" act - all straight men should be equated with rapists. And Santorum, being a Catholic heterosexual male, must therefore consider himself a child-molesting rapist. Impressive for a college graduate.
Yet while Santorum provided an apparently endless plethora of absurdities, the Democrats, including our beloved Howard Dean, focused on the comparison between bigamy, polygamy and incest to nontraditional sex.
Yes, the outrage, to think someone could make a comparison between the illegality of nontraditional sex (essentially all incest is) and nontraditional marital structures. It seems many of Santorum's critics are perfectly content to legislate consensual sexuality as long as the legal litmus test is set by their conception of what constitutes acceptable sexual activity.
With such duplicity on their side, certain Democrats intensified their efforts to promote themselves as courageous fighters of the "bigoted" Republicans.
So, where were these courageous Democrats before the Santorum debacle? Because, of course, the senator wasn't attempting to introduce new legislation - he was defending legislation already implemented.