On Gay Rights

This article was originally published in "The Morning Call" (circulation: 90,000) on October 2, 2011 under the title "Santorum complaints hypocritical."

In a recent interview with Politico, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum issued a scathing denunciation of Google. "If you're a responsible business," he remarked, "you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country."

One might expect such strong words to be reserved for the greatest rascals of American capitalism – you know, like the Wall Street firms whose chicanery plunged our nation into its current economic mess, or perhaps the corporate executives who throw hardworking employees onto the unemployment rolls instead of accepting modest cuts to their own massive salaries. What could Google have done to provoke such a condemnation from the erstwhile senator?

To answer that question, one must look back to 2003, when an Associated Press reporter asked Santorum why he opposed gay rights:

"We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now (a reference to Lawrence v. Texas), that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they (homosexuals) undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual 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."

And again:

"In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

While Santorum may think saying he only wants to protect family and marriage conceals the hatefulness of his views, history reveals that most advocates of oppression have come up with excuses for their prejudices. When Grover Cleveland spoke out against the right of women to vote, he claimed that he was motivated not by sexism, but by a desire to protect "the characters of the wives and mothers of our land." Similarly, when George Wallace fought against integration, he spoke for millions of segregationists when he dismissed charges of racism as "fantasy" and insisted that they opposed civil rights measures because they would lead to "the destruction of the Constitution and our nation."

In other words, Santorum wasn't fooling anyone, least of all prominent lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activist Dan Savage, who decided that it was time to strike back against the bullies. Using humor as his weapon, he declared "Santorum" to be a new word and held a contest to see who could come up with the funniest definition. Thousands of submissions were considered, and when a winner was finally selected, a website was created to solidify its place in the American lexicon.

Because of its unprintable nature, I can't tell you what definition Savage ultimately chose. Suffice to say that it became very popular, was viewed by millions of people, and has thus became the No. 1 hit whenever a Google search is conducted for "Santorum."

That brings me back to the recent interview, in which Santorum demanded that Google exempt him from its search engine's algorithm so that attention might be drawn away from Savage's website. There is a comic irony in seeing a man who — though quick to brandish a laissez-faire philosophy when opposing regulations on businesses that would protect workers and consumers — doesn't hesitate to call for interfering with the practices of one particular business because it is allowing him to be ridiculed.

In a way, this symbolizes one of the defining hypocrisies of the modern Republican Party, which supports the principle of "small government" when it is politically beneficial (such as by serving the financial self-interests of the base of rich donors referred to by George W. Bush as the "have mores") but abandons it as soon as that is no longer the case (like when it angers homophobes). While Santorum may be unusually obnoxious, the sad truth is that his views on gay rights aren't far removed from those held by most of his fellow GOPers. Even as we celebrate the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the Santorum incident is a sobering reminder that we still have a long way to go.

The original article can be found here: http://www.mcall.com/opinion/yourview/mc-santorum-rozsa-yv-20111002,0,2282411.story