Things Rick Santorum gets Really Wrong

This isn't actually going to be a very long-form blog-post about all the things my former PA Senator Rick Santorum actually does get wrong, because I'm only a blogger, and I don't even get ad revenue from this thing.  What I want to address is his weird anti-gay rap--again, because it's the one thing he's really got, and because it's the stupid, bigoted thing he really wants to ride somewhere.  I'm not sure where he wants to body-surf on a wave of hate, but somehow--anti-"Teh Ghey Seks" became his only one true thing, so here's his latest iteration of it:

The most notable thing about bland presidential candidate Rick Santorum is his tenacious, almost obsessive crusade against gay rights. The former Pennsylvania senator has compared same-sex love to bestiality, says gays are waging a “jihad” against him, wants to reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and continues to peddle predatory “reparative therapy,” or the gay “cure.”



He is so impassioned by his fight, Santorum compares himself to Abraham Lincoln fighting another “moral wrong,” slavery.

“I have been a long-time advocate for states’ rights. However, I believe as Abraham Lincoln did — that states don’t have the rights to legalize moral wrongs,” said Santorum yesterday.


The comment came in response to rival Herman Cain’s assertion earlier in the day that states should be allowed to decide gay marriage on an individual basis.

There has been a lot of instances of the peculiar institution being used as an analogy for things the right doesn't like--in particular, gay marriage and abortion.  The differences for why gay marriage has nothing in common with slavery are obvious to anyone who thinks--consensuality, there's a big thing. Slavery is non-consensual. A slave has no control--a person who has been proffered an engagement can say yes or no. One relationship is founded on oppression, the other is founded in love, for another. Slavery is a denial of human choice--marrying the person you love is a great expression of one's choice--they are, in some ways, very opposite things. It would be far more slavery for someone to choose marriage, for example, to someone one did not love--and cleave unto them based on a lie, for fear of oppression, because one was made a slave to the opinion of others' bigotry--right?

I'd say as much.  So this analogy of calling the recognition by law of a state of consensual marriage by two willing partners an immorality akin to slavery is exceptionally inapt.  And I'd think someone who proposed such nonsense should be viewed as a particularly unserious, if not deranged, thinker, for all that.

Which is why it just pains me that he is still running for president.  I consider loving others one of my freedoms, not a form of slavery.