From "ArizonaTeach" comes this…
Please explain to me the difference:
"I don't support the war but I support the troops."
"I don't support homosexuality but I support homosexual people."
If you're claiming that Santorum is "winking to his supporters" then you're calling any anti-war people anti-Americans who want our troops dead.
And that's not a slippery slope.
Okay, here's my explanation, but let's note that the second quote above is not exactly what Senator Santorum said. What he said was that he was fine with the notion of people being homosexuals as long as they didn't commit homosexual acts. That's pretty much an internal contradiction. It's like someone saying, "There's nothing wrong with disco music as long as no one actually plays it." Homosexuals are, pretty much by definition, people who commit homosexual acts. So the distinction Santorum was attempting to draw was a bit disingenuous. It is possible in a spiritual sense to condemn what you believe to be a sin yet still love the sinner, and perhaps that was what he meant. But he was talking about enacting or not enacting laws, and laws are based on prohibiting behavior.
Now then. The distinction between the two statements you laid on me goes to the definition of the word, "support." This whole notion of "supporting the troops" goes back, at least in my experience, to the Vietnam protests. I assume it has existed with earlier wars, but that's where a lot of us first heard it. Then, we heard an ever-increasing number of folks who felt that that war was either unjustified or that it was being so mismanaged that we should cut our losses and bring our soldiers home before any more of them got killed or maimed. Somehow, the rejoinder to that sentiment became, "You aren't supporting our troops." This was one of those instances — way too common in our society from all angles — where one side of an issue deals with opposition by misrepresenting it into something more noxious and inarguable. It's like when Jerry Falwell voices a political viewpoint, wraps it in Biblical references, and claims that to be against his viewpoint is to oppose God.
There are a lot of folks out there — and I am not among them — who believed and perhaps still believe that the whole Iraq invasion was an utter mistake, and perhaps one with unstated, business-related motives. That is a criticism of White House and Pentagon decisions, not of the fighting men and women. One can certainly have nothing but positive feelings towards the troops themselves yet still feel that the higher-level decisions that sent them off to fight are wrong. So you can "support" the fighting men and women without supporting the war. But I don't know how one supports homosexuals in any real way while saying they shouldn't be allowed to commit homosexual acts.
I think Santorum is advocating an unreasonable governmental control of folks' sex lives and implying he wants to work towards something even more restrictive. Once you start denying any right to privacy in the bedroom, you're looking to become more intrusive in policing sexual activity. But saying that anti-war folks want to see soldiers killed is just plain misrepresenting a political opposition.