May 11, 2011

Happy Belated Birthday, Rick!

Via the Daily Santorum, we learn that yesterday (05/10/11) was 53rd birthday for Pennsylvania's own fabulously anti-gay ex-Senator Rick Santorum.

Did anyone else know this? The birthday part, we've known for a while Rick's position on gay sex.

What a wonderful coincidence, then, that the Blog for Equality Day occurred this year on the exact same day. What a wonderful birthday present for the Senator! Kudos to Sue!

That being said, I wanted to turn everyone's attention to this clip I found at the Huffingtonpost.

Rick was asked about Governor Mitch Daniel's calling for a "truce" on moral issues among GOP candidates in this election cycle. Here's what Rick said:


James Peron characterized it this way:
Apparently, he believes that respecting the rights of others to make their own choices is anti-American. He said that the idea of a truce on attempts to control people's private lives means one "doesn't understand what America is all about." It now appears that what America "is all about" is denying people freedom and equality of rights before the law.

Santorum launched into rhetoric about the right to liberty and how people need "to be free" to "pursue their own dreams," but he seemed to be saying that the dreams they had to follow was "to serve their God, and to serve their family and community." This is not individual rights, only the right to be servant to others. This was followed by some comments about "strong families" and that "if we abandon that, we have given up on America."

He didn't directly answer the question and he certainly blew a lot of hot air, but the essence of his answer was that if the Republican party doesn't hammer away at people it dislikes, on private moral issues, then the Republican party is giving up on America. The only way to protect freedom is to stop people from being free, in the name of the family.
But then again, Peron characterized Rick this way:
When it comes to big government moralism, few Republicans can match Rick Santorum. He has always been one of the more extreme theocrats within the GOP and nothing has changed since Pennsylvania voters wisely threw him out of the U.S. Senate in 2006. Santorum is an advocate of the junk science called "intelligent design" and is a leader in the anti-gay movement.

He said that polygamy, adultery and sodomy are all "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family." An ultra-orthodox Latin-Mass Catholic, Santorum went so far as to blame the epidemic of Catholic priests molesting children on "political and cultural liberalism," based on the assumption that Boston "lies at the center of the storm." Apparently, the senator was unaware that the problem was worldwide and just as prevalent in conservative areas as liberal ones. Nor can one ignore the fact that priests are part of a very conservative Catholic culture.
Happy Birthday, Rick!

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