Santorum Wants To Be The Dictator Of Your Sexual Realm

In light of Santorum's recent surge in the polls, and his near-tie with Romney in Iowa, it's worth revisiting his appearance on Piers Morgan's show.

In the below interview from August, Morgan asks Santorum whether or not homosexuality is a sin.

MORGAN: Well, let's clarify a few things. Do you think homosexuality is a sin?

SANTORUM: Well, that's a decision not for a politician. That's a decision for someone who is a cleric. I'm not in that line of work. There are a lot of things in society that are, quote, "sins" or moral wrongs that we don't make illegal. Just because something is immoral or something that is wrong doesn't mean that it should be illegal, and that the federal government or any level of government should involve themselves in.

He goes on to state that, if he were a state legislator in Texas at the time of Lawrence v. Texas he would have voted against it. "I don't think that's something the state should involve itself in," stated Santorum.

Piers then presses him further on the homosexuality issue. (You have to give Morgan credit here -- his 'entertainment' show on occasion demonstrates more journalistic doggedness than any of the major network or cable news shows.)

MORGAN: So, you must have a view about whether homosexuality is a sin. I think if American people want to vote for you either way as president, they are entitled to know an honest answer to a straightforward question. You did invite me to ask you any question I liked.

SANTORUM: Yes, I did. And, of course, the Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is a sin. I'm Catholic and subscribe to the Catholic Church's teaching. But that's not relevant from the standpoint of how I view these issues from a public policy of view and that's (why) I answered the question the way I did. From a public policy point of view, there are a lot of things I find immoral -- morally wrong or as you would use the term "sinful" that don't necessarily rise to the level that government should be involved in regulating that activity. And so, I answered it correctly. I answered it, in fact, succinctly and directly, that while I think things are morally wrong, that doesn't rise to the level of government involvement in that activity.

So, the question seems to be: Which 'sins' merit government involvement in Santorum's world? Certainly consensual sex acts between two adults in private should not be on par with, say, rape or burglary.

In Santorum's blurred church-state view, these things apparently do rise to the level of government involvement.

Quite simply, Rick Santorum doesn't believe anyone should have sex unless it is a penis entering a vagina for the purpose of sexual reproduction. Recreational sex? Absolutely unacceptable.

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Counter to how things are supposed to be?

Who, exactly, decides how things are supposed to be? Apparently, it's Rick Santorum and the Catholic Church.

Culture Wars 2012: Faux Religious Persecution

Sarah Posner, over at Religion Dispatches, writes about how 2012 will be a "banner year in the faux religious discrimination wars."

She highlights a full page ad placed in the Washington Post by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The ad provided the Bishops with a venue to voice their disapproval of the Department of Health and Human Services rule which requires employer health insurance plans to provide contraception without co-pay. The Bishops claim that if Obama does not amend the rule, his administration will be guilty of religious discrimination.

Posner writes:

The Bishops’ opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services rule—which they describe as mandating “preventive services” (scare quotes in original)—was to date the most public salvo from their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. That effort was launched last June because, in USCCB president Timothy Dolan’s ominous words, “never before have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith and as a service provider. If we do not act now, the consequence will be grave.” At the Bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore this past November, Dolan took his charges into conspiratorial territory, telling reporters that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were attempting to “push religion back into the sacristy.”

While many may see this as simply more of the same Catholic 'recommendations' we've seen over the years, the Bishops are poised to put their money where their mouth is.

Staffed with ten of the Bishops’ brethren, the Ad Hoc Committee will be assisted by the USCCB’s former top lawyer and now Associate General Secretary, Anthony Picarello, who served on Obama’s first Advisory Council to his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. A staff lawyer and a lobbyist have also been hired and assigned to the effort.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution last October, Bishop William E. Lori, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee, described LGBT equality and access to reproductive care as “serious threats to religious liberty,” that “represent only the most recent instances in a broader trend of erosion of religious liberty in the United States.” The problem, he went on, is like a disease that must be treated immediately, “lest the disease spread so quickly that the patient is overcome before the ultimate cure can be formulated and delivered.”

Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, sees the Bishops’ framing as “significant,” noting that, “They’re really trying to put a spin on what’s happening, and they’re hoping that they can convince people that their rights are the ones being violated.”

These faux religious discrimination claims are a phenomenon that we have seen mirrored in US culture for years, although it seems to have been ramping up recently.

These claims come from two angles:

On one side, as Posner illustrates, we see religious organizations and legislators condemning any tax money being associated in any way with the funding of services at odds with religious teachings (contraceptives, abortion, etc).

On the other side we see cries of religious persecution any time harmful or discriminatory religious ideology is condemned or challenged.

Daily, we hear politicians claiming that equal treatment of gays and lesbians encroaches on their religious liberty -- essentially their 'right' to aggressively discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Just a few days ago, I engaged Peter LaBarbera on Twitter. Peter LaBarbera is the president of the anti-LGBT Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, an organization which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

LaBarbera had re-tweeted a comment that stated, "The left likes to immediately shut people's views down by shouting "Racist, sexist ,homophobe" - since 80s."

In other words, LaBarbera and his ilk believe that, if their religion states that something is true (i.e. that homosexuality is an 'abomination,' or that women should submit to their husbands), and they act on that 'truth' by way of discrimination, then society is wrong to condemn these acts as homophobic or sexist. They are scripturally 'true,' after all, and our constitution protects the freedom to practice our religion.

Recently, on the campaign trail, Rick Santorum stated that he would seek to invalidate gay marriages via a constitutional amendment. During his trip to Iowa this week, he stated (as he has on many occasions) that "rights come to us from God." This is not dog-whistle politics. There's no subtlety about it. This reflects Santorum's insistence (and that of many other GOP candidates and legislators) that anti-LGBT, anti-choice legislation is in keeping with God's law, and is therefore wholly American.

We have seen resistance to hate speech legislation (and same-sex marriage legislation) in which opponents wrongly proclaim that ministers would be prosecuted for preaching against homosexuality.

We have seen legislation which allows for anti-gay bullying, as long as it is religion-based.

The culture wars have come down to this: opponents of progressive legislation have run out of cards to play. Their beliefs are not backed up by the science. The studies do not support their anti-LGBT, anti-choice ideology. (And in the case of contraception, 98% of Catholic women use birth control, despite its ban in the church.) All they have left is the supernatural, which is protected by religious freedom, and that's the only card they have left to play.

What they fail to understand is that religious beliefs cannot become law simply because they are religious beliefs. Religious beliefs may indeed dovetail with secular law -- for instance, stealing is frowned upon for many reasons that have nothing to do with religion. It is not illegal because God said so somewhere in the Bible. We do not have laws against wearing blended fabrics -- such a law would not have a secular purpose.

If the basis of proposed legislation (or your opposition to legislation) in any way relies upon supernatural concepts (i.e. 'soul,' 'sin,' 'God,' etc.) you can be pretty sure that it's unconstitutional.

It is not religious discrimination to employ and enforce secular law (or to extend secular rights to all citizens). It is not religious discrimination to oppose and strike down the legislation of religious ideas which have no secular basis.

I would ask any religious conservative if they are okay with implementing Islamic laws requiring women to cover all of their bodies except their hands and face. If not, why? Most likely, they would answer that this is not something they believe, and that it as extreme and discriminatory. This is how many Americans view the beliefs of the Christian right.

To impose these laws on us is the same as imposing Islamic law on them. To deny citizens their secular rights because of your religious beliefs is impose your religion on those who do not subscribe.

Mississippi's 'Personhood' Amendment Is Ludicrous (It May Be Coming to Your State, Too)

Update: The Mississippi personhood amendment was defeated on Tuesday, Nov. 8, but other efforts are underway in other states. This initiative is not going away anytime soon.

A blastocyst (aka 'person') on the tip of a pin

Mississippi is on the verge of passing a constitutional amendment that would define a person as a fertilized egg.

The so-called "personhood" amendment is on the November 8 ballot, and according to the most recent polling, it is very likely to pass.

This should be ridiculously alarming to anyone who is not completely out of touch with reality. Not only would the amendment have cascading legal implications, it would also have serious impact on the health and rights of all women. In addition, the amendment endorses all sorts of religious ideas, whether or not those are defined in the legislation.

Slate served up a slightly humorous, yet incredibly scary, list of legal questions that would arise from the legislation, including the following:

If you are legal person at fertilization, does that mean you could drink at 20 years and three months? Could you drive at 15 and three months? Could you vote at age 17, and collect Social Security at 64?

For legal purposes, would your birthday still be your “birth” day? Or your fertilization day?

Could you arrest women for smoking or drinking while pregnant? Could the state file a child abuse case against a mother who didn’t wear a seatbelt or otherwise endangered her fetus?

If a doctor doesn't take all possible steps to stop a miscarriage, would that be manslaughter?

Could you post ultrasound photos of your fetus (naked) on Facebook? Or would that be child pornography?

Would you be an American citizen if you were conceived in Mississippi but born elsewhere? Could there be “anchor babies” whose parents come to the United States, have sex, and then return home to Mexico for their baby’s birth?

If a woman eats food contaminated by Listeria and miscarries, could the agribusiness be prosecuted for murder?

What about ectopic pregnancies? If the embryo is not removed, it could kill the mother. Should the mother or the doctor be prosecuted for manslaughter if they remove it? Maybe it would be fairer to prosecute the embryo. If the fertilized egg is a person, isn't that person trying to commit murder-suicide?

Granted, some of these examples seem silly. But their ludicrousness underscores a few things: A) Such an extreme and broad amendment has huge implications on the interpretation of the law moving forward, and B) The amendment is ludicrous from the get-go.

Let's look at the human blastocyst. (By definition of the personhood amendment, a blastocyst would now constitute a person.)

Neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris wrote about blastocysts in relation to the ethics of stem cell research, but his arguments are just as apt in debating 'personhood':

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. [These] human embryos...do not have brains, or even neurons....Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential gets you absolutely nowhere.

Sure, a fertilized egg has the potential to become a human being. But we must also remember that an acorn is not a tree. It has the potential to become a tree, sure. We must take into consideration the fact that trees evolved to overcompensate -- to produce acorns that outnumber the trees that result from those acorns. This is how nature works.

Twenty percent of all pregnancies result in miscarriage. If all fertilized eggs are 'people,' then 20 percent of all people are killed before they are born. Will there be investigations to determine who was responsible for the untimely death of 1/5 of all 'people' in Mississippi? Will every woman who suffers a miscarriage be interrogated? If it was natural, is God the most prolific serial murderer in Mississippi's history?

Now that I've brought religion into the picture (how can one not?), let's look at this business of souls. Harris writes:

But let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera. You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case.

Isn't it time we admitted that this arithmetic of souls does not make any sense? The naive idea of souls...is intellectually indefensible.

The vote occurring in Mississippi should be very concerning to anyone who cares about privacy, science, liberty, and the enforcement of religious ideology as law. This amendment would ban all abortions, including those that result from incest and rape. It would ban IUDs and 'morning-after pills.' It would render embryonic stem cell research illegal. It would hamper in-vitro fertilization treatment.

God granting personhood to a blastocyst (artist rendering)

And, if successful, it will serve as a template for similar amendments across the country (there are already efforts brewing in Florida, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states), and passage could fundamentally transform the entire framework of laws in each state.

But what should be most troubling about this amendment is it attempts to define legally something which has yet to be defined by science. There is no consensus whatsoever as to when 'life' begins. There is no consensus on the definition of 'life,' in reproductive terms. The legislation attempts to define life in language that is in no way scientific. What it attempts to do is say that a bolt comes down from on high at the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg, and transforms it into a person.

This is supernaturalism, it's not supported by science, and it's about to become law.