Rick Santorum is still a weirdo, but he could be a weirdo 4Prez.

Rick Santorum recently held forth on the subject of gay civil rights, as he is wont to do--hell, I'm wont to do that a little bit myself, except, there's this major, glaring difference. I'm for them. He's apparently very much against.  So I want to point to this agitating little thing from RightWingWatch.org about what former PA Senator Santorum had to say on the subject.

In refusing to enforce DOMA, the president was saying a law that was overwhelmingly passed by both Democrats and Republicans, and signed by a Democratic president, was simply no longer valid, no longer constitutional. Usually such actions are the province of the Supreme Court. This was a power grab, and it was wrong at every level. It was also a surprise. President Obama defended the law in the courts for the first half of his term, and said to Rick Warren in 2008, "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman."

Let me first define what we are not talking about. I believe if two adults of the same sex want to have a relationship that is their business. But when they ask society to give that relationship special recognition and privileges, then we should be able to have a rational debate about whether that is good public policy.


We should also ensure the debate takes cognizance of its constitutional implications. And with the President's decision, the free exercise of religion will be eviscerated.

That's a load of bullshit. In refusing to enforce DOMA--the administration might actually be prolonging its sorry-ass existence. My reasoning on that is that I don't believe it does stand up to the constitutional equal protections clause, and because of that, should be struck down by SCOTUS. It was always bad law. It was decided by popular spinelessness and an unwillingness to recognize the relationships of real people and having a mandate to defer equality to a more enlightened day.


And I think that day is now, because--equality. Because--fairness. Because--it's right. Because--the people who say other people's relationships don't matter and try to legally make them not matter, are the stupidest and don't matterest people in the world. We know gay and lesbian and trans* people by now. And we know bi people (hello!) and asexual people and we can recognize that all of these individuals have rights. Yes? Because they are people. You can't take that much away. Don't even try.

And straight people can marry. So, there's a contract they legally enter into. And....gay people want to make this kind of contract with their partner, too. To say that they can't is to actually make a claim for the specialness of straight relationships, and hold them to be privileged. That's the actual unfairness. What makes straight relationships so special? And also--how does "freedom of religion" enter into this at all?

Of all the nonsensical Santoriumian whatthefuckery, this claim that somehow, gays marrying will impair his or anyone else's ability to practice their religion is the stupidest thing imaginable. The freedom of religion means that some Jews can keep Kosher laws regarding food. This doesn't prevent me, a shiksa atheist, from a mad bacon binge. So, if Santorum's church says ixnay on the aygay arriagemay--I don't have to follow that piggish latinate nonsense, either. Of course, he can try and keep his kids from accepting gay marriage or entering into one--but what does that have to do with anyone else's freedom of religion--supposing their own religion leaves them free to marry the person of their choice, even if it were a person of the same sex? No one is obligated by law to be a "sodomite" by virtue of same-sex marriages being allowed, and naturally, no one should be made a "santorumite" by accepting only his rather narrow view of marriage.

In short--the decision to support an unconstitutional decree might be a power-grab, but to refuse to uphold a given law isn't really an exercise of power at all. It's only a deferment of the exercise. On the whole, I might prefer a case be brought to SCOTUS, now that Judge Vaughn Walker so excellently determined  the standing under the equal protection and due process clauses to positively determine that it isn't really constitutional, after all, to privilege straightness in an especially rigorous and exhaustive fashion.

It appears to me that Santorum is unfamiliar with, or doesn't acknowledge the merits of, the Perry vs. Schwartzenegger case, and that he doesn't necessarily appreciate any arguments from due process or equal protection, if he means to privilege both his orientation and his particular faith-tradition, and eliminate, for example, my orientation, and my "no faith" tradition.  But anyhow, he's all wrong and shouldn't even be thinking about being the  president of me. So there.