Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 75

Out ofFocnsnoln the Family
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Senator Santorum, who votes in concert with the Christian Right’s
wishes, is one of the seven top-ranking Republicans in the U. S. Senate. His
name has been mentioned as a possible presidential or vice presidential
candidate in 2008. He is also well known for his attitude toward gay Americans.
In an Associated Press interview on April 22, 2003, while referring to the
Lawrence v. Texas sodomy case then before the Supreme Court, the senator
claimed that “if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual
[gay] 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.
You have the right to anything.” His juxtaposing of gay sex and man-on-dog sex
in that same interview was also cause for alarm among many Pennsylvanians he
supposedly represents:
SANTORUM: Every society in the history of man has upheld
the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a
woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that
society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what?
Children. Monogamous relationships. 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. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a
dramatic impact on the quality—
The senator’s statement was cut short by the stunned AP interviewer:
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about ‘man on dog’ with a United
States senator, it’s sort of freaking me out.”4
PUT SIMPLY . . . As far as the United States is a republic founded
upon the belief in equality and justice for all citizens, the civil institution of
marriage should not be sequestered by religious ideology. Marriage, like any
viable social institution, is essentially an organic system and as such must grow
and evolve as culture and times change. No one would deny “gay marriage” is a
substantive evolutionary change, but one that can—indeed must—be
accomplished if society is to evolve and be true to its beliefs in equality and
justice for all. As Jonathan Rauch noted in Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good fo r
Gays, Goodfor Straights, and Goodfor America:
Striding still is not an option. There is no going back to 1950.
Homosexuals are increasingly open and ordinary and will not
retreat into the closet. The days when homosexual unions
marital or nonmarital—were invisible are gone, and gone for
good. Homosexual relationships will enjoy increasing social
recognition and respect even outside marriage. If your first