At the same time that Rick Santorum’s 19-year-old daughter Elizabeth emerged on the campaign trail talking about “gay friends” who support her father, Santorum’s former Senate communications director, a gay man named Robert Traynham, popped up on “Hardball” defending Santorum. All this while Santorum continues to get booed and jeered at campaign appearances all over New Hampshire for his stance on marriage equality. More interesting is how Traynham, now a political analyst with a show on the Comcast Network in DC, seems to have previously purged his former boss from his past, perhaps seeing him as radioactive to a career in media. Pittsburgh blogger Sue Kerr had written a blog post just a week ago (before Traynham surfaced in the media) titled, “What Ever Happened to the Gay Guy Who Worked for Santorum?” in which she noted that Traynham has gone on to an illustrious career but doesn’t mention anywhere in his bio on his website that he worked for Santorum….
Now that Rick Santorum is enjoying his moment in the sun as the GOP Flavor of the Moment, I find it interesting to watch and listen to those who’ve leapt to his defense. “Oh…Heavens, no,” they say, “the Rick Santorum I know loves everyone. He even has gay friends and employees.” That Santorum’s long and sordid public record of utterances on all things Gay is unmistakable in it’s vitriol and dismissiveness seems lost on his apologists. No thinking, lucid person who’s been paying attention could believe for a moment that Santorum is not the hateful uber-Jesus-y bigot he’s spent years portraying himself as.
If you don’t believe me, there’s the little thing called Da Interwebs that will make my argument for me. Go to the YouTubes; I think you’ll find that Santorum has (repeatedly) hung himself on his own rhetorical petard on numerous occasions.
You’d have to be deluded on a level we’ve not previously seen in American politics to actually believe Santorum has nothing against gay sex considering that Santorum in 2003 lashed out at the U.S. Supreme Court for it’s decision striking down sodomy laws. Santorum said at the time: “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, you have the right to anything…Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery, whether it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.” He also added that he doesn’t approve of acts “outside of traditional heterosexual relationships.”
Those attempting to rewrite history on Santorum’s behalf are by association every bit the liar and bigot Little Ricky is. There’s just no way to rewrite years of anti-gay rhetoric, bigotry, and disregard of basic human rights. Left to his own devices, homosexuality would be illegal (as would birth control), Liberals would be shut out of the political process, women would be relegated to sperm receptacle status and considered the unquestioned property of men, and abortion providers would be jailed as felons. Oh, and Catholic sexuality morality would become the de facto law of the land. Not bad for a “small government” Conservative, eh? (As one of my recent commenters said, “Small enough to fit in your uterus.” Indeed.)
I understand that Conservatives are looking for a candidate that they can rally behind in order to defeat the Romneybot 5400. I get that Santorum seems as if he might just be that candidate. The reality, though, is that no matter how much whitewash you apply to a turd, in the end you still have a turd. It may look better. It may be more presentable. It may seem more appealing. But it’s still a turd. Look back over the past 20-25 years of Santorum’s public record, and there’s no denying that he’s a turd bigot and an intolerant zealot willing to oppress those who don’t share his narrow ideology. Simply put, Little Ricky as President would be a disaster for our civil and legal rights. The reality is that Rick Santorum would work to turn America into a place where government intrudes in our bedrooms, our health care, and other aspects of our lives that seem…well, odd for such an allegedly committed “small government” Conservative. That so many people are willing to lie so openly and egregiously on Little Ricky’s behalf says more about their lack of honesty and integrity than anything else. No matter how you try to finess it, Rick Santorum is a liar and a bigot.
Save yourself the whitewash; it’s still a turd.
