Thursday, April 24, 2003

More Santorum...he and his apologists have actually done a good job of explaining his statements in context. An excellent argument has been made that the Senator--when he made his remarks about gay sex--was indeed referring to the original court statement that allowed that opening the door for one sex crime opened the door (legally) for others.

The problem with this deduction is that the original statement is itself prejudicial--it presumes that all of the sexual behaviors under discussion are criminal because they are included in some statutes as crimes. For those who are fond of "Is 'is' is?" statements, this is a good example of one. Yes, the acts are all criminal because in some states they are crimes. But making these comparisons doesn't deal with the real problem of criminalizing behaviors that do not harm anyone. And if Santorum had really wanted to be sensitive toward gay people, he would have avoided the legal argument that he made for the very reason that it presumes and perpetuates the criminalizing of harmless behavior.

So he is technically correct that he spoke with no malice, but the spirit of what he was defending betrayed his bigotry.