Just read a wide range of Internet comments on the controversy. Some called for him to resign, which I usually think is showboating. Good, bad or indifferent, a representative under this kind of fire is there at the service of those who elected him. Only they really have the right to remove him and if they so desire, there are processes by which they can do that, including the next election. I also see a lot of folks doing backflips of logic to try and explain the difference between legalizing homosexual unions and leaping onto that much-mentioned "slippery slope" towards incest, polygamy, bigamy, going to Yanni concerts, and other no-nos. (I am generally suspicious of "slippery slope" arguments. Some are quite valid but some are just ways of masking your inability to argue the immediate. It's like you want to ban cheeseburgers and your arguments are feeble, so you argue that eating cheeseburgers is that fatal first step down the slippery slope to killing puppies. You know, if cheeseburger consumption increases, we would eventually run out of cows, and we'd have to make them out of something…)
What I think bothers me about the Senator's remarks are, first of all, that folks are seizing on the homosexuality = incest end of it while ignoring his more offensive (to me) remarks about the children who were molested by priests, trying to pretend they were mainly consenting teens just shy of the age of consent. No, some of them were quite non-consenting 4-year-olds. Secondly, there's a kind of soft, coded bigotry underscoring this kind of thing.
Analogies between gay rights and the rights of racial minorities only go so far, but I think this one applies. Years ago, a "mole" who worked in the George Wallace campaign revealed that Wallace and his aides had actually rehearsed saying the word, "nigra." It was deliberately picked as a kind of halfway-point between "negro" and "nigger." The idea was to send a message to potential Wallace supporters: In order to get along in the world and perhaps win the presidency, ol' George couldn't use the word he really meant…but you know what he means. If someone called Wallace on it — and some did — he'd feign innocence and say, "Why, shucks, that's just my accent." It was a way of sending coded messages to his people while being able to disavow use of the word.
Now, maybe I'm reading too much into this but during the Trent Lott brouhaha, I thought a very apt comment was that the Republicans were not promoting or advocating bigotry but that they were trying real hard to wink at it and not lose the votes of such folks. It's the same way that their "big tent" philosophy causes them to try and have it both ways on abortion. There's a large chunk of people out there who believe that anyone who isn't actively working against abortion is a baby murderer…and the Republican leadership has done a good job of assuring such folks that they agree while at the same time saying those baby murderers are welcome in the party and that the G.O.P. has their interests at heart, as well.
I initially thought Santorum's remarks were just that of a gay-basher thoughtlessly shooting his mouth off. I dunno. Maybe they were more calculated than that. An awful lot of other prominent Republicans seem to be making the same kind of "have it both ways" remark that assures a certain core constituency that it will do what it can to roll back gay rights and similar causes, while at the same time trying not to alienate that part of the voting bloc that believes — as hard-core conservatives perhaps should — that the government should stay out of the bedroom. When you say you have no problem with homosexuals, only with homosexual acts, that sounds glib and, yes, it has its Biblical antecedents. But in the world of politics, I think it's a way of hinting a stronger position without having to actually say it.