Santorum's Donut

I've been trying for some time to envision how a Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage would affect my "traditional marriage". I finally found the answer via a donut. Contrary to what former Senator Rick Santorum might imagine - or actually believe - I did not presume that "gay marriage" would somehow pave the way to a bigamous union with this or any other  form of fried dough. Superficial as it may sound, the answer was a matter of appearances. Looking down at that sinfully delicious item on my plate, it was obvious. Zero - the answer was zero. A legal decision allowing consenting adults who love each other - or, at least, believe they do in that moment - doesn't diminish my marriage one bit. At times I wonder how much of the opposition stems not from misguided yet sincere religious conviction but rather the fear that the thousands and thousands of gay couples who've stayed together - sometimes for decades - despite decades of discrimination will make them look bad. Of course, people couldn't be that shallow, could they?

A Queer Sort of Fairy Tale

Like many, I find myself a little unsure what to make of today's monumental legal decision about marriage equality in Pennsylvania. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that my one-time home state has decided that a weirdo of any gender can marry a fellow weirdo of any gender. I just worry about what happens next. In particular, I just hope that the understandable excitement of gaining a right long denied won't lead to people doing anything depraved like having a "fairy tale wedding". Last I checked, fairy tales tend to be filled with death, sadness and regret. Of course, in that regard, most marriages are like a fairy tale. Carry on.

Political Damnation

Political life is perhaps the ultimate example of "damned if you do, damned if you don't". Any elected official who's accomplished enough to run for higher office probably had to make compromises to get to that point. On the other end of the spectrum, those who haven't accomplished much run the risk of being defined by others because they've done so little to define themselves. You don't have to look any further than the two current GOP presidential front-runners to see this principle in action.

Though certain portions of his resume are causing him political grief, there's no doubt that Mitt Romney has accomplished a lot in his public life. How one feels about those accomplishments will almost certainly reflect their political leanings. This is demonstrated most obviously by the ongoing debate about how much the health-care law Romney signed into law as the governor of Massachusetts resembles the national law signed by President Obama.

Within conservative circles (i.e. the so-called base of the Republican party), the Massachusetts law and its mandate that nearly all citizens maintain a certain level of health insurance coverage is a mammoth affront to conservative principles that no amount of equivocating by the former governor will address. Consequently, Romney is being forced to run away from one of the key things that shows his worthiness for the presidency and in the process, displaying a lack of conviction that marks him as decidedly unworthy of the office.

Rick Santorum, on the other hand, is as stark a contrast to Mitt Romney as you'll find for another candidate nominally in the same political party. Though the former US Senator's record may be light on concrete accomplishments, no one could plausibly suggest that he lacks conviction or the initiative to speak his mind. This is never more true than when it comes to expressing the most alarming of social views. While other GOP candidates, especially Romney, have faced criticism for shifting views on various social and moral issues, you always know where Santorum stands. This combination of a relatively thin resume and views that felt outdated decades ago, let alone today, has made him something of an easy target for anyone to his political left (i.e. anyone more moderate than Mike Huckabee).

At the most extreme, in terms of both political leaning and poor taste, is the infamous "Google problem". It's telling that, despite the large-scale mainstream coverage of his campaign, Santorum still can't disassociate himself from the scatological use of his name that his insensitive comments about homosexuality provoked. Even putting the "Google problem" aside, there are currently as many top search results about him cursing at a New York Times reporter as there are about his policies and achievements. You don't have to go too much further down the list to read about his time in congress and connection to the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere".

What's left is a candidate who brings to mind the story of how Oliver Wendell Holmes characterized one of the Roosevelts (sources differ on whether it was TR or FDR) having a second-class intellect but a first-rate temperament. Even his fiercest supporters would be hard-pressed to claim that he rise above (or even reaches) second-class in either field. In short, he's Rick Perry with better debate skills and is perhaps the first plausible presidential candidate in the nuclear era who you could believe would press the red button to fulfill a prophecy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Passion Is No Ordinary Word

Sometimes I just get a line from a song stuck in my head. Fortunately, they tend to be good lines from good songs, so it's generally not a bad thing. Today's comes from a song by Graham Parker Ambiguous and goes, "the meek shall inherit the Earth from their friends the scum." Though I've liked that turn of phrase since I first heard the album the song comes from, Don't Tell Columbus, it initially struck me as almost a throwaway shot from Parker, whose jabs may not be quite as cleverly worded as his contemporary Elvis Costello but frequently bite just as hard. However, when I think about the tone that the Republican nomination campaign has taken and the undercurrent of self-righteous Bible-thumping that's infused it, especially from Rick Santorum, those words from five years ago feel a little sharper and a bit less funny, which is probably why they're sticking in my head now. As skilled as Parker is at envisioning the most dishonest and hypocritical of human behavior, I have no idea if he envisioned anything like the current climate when he wrote those words, but their continued relevance is just another reminder for fans like me of how enduring his songs are.

The Other GM Issue

It's hardly surprising that the GOP presidential candidates have strong views on the topic of same-sex marriage. Nor should it surprise us that these views are typically negative. What is amazing, though, is the wild abandon with which the candidates express those views, usually with a profound disregard for logic and reason (not to mention facts).

Had she not withdrawn from the race after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, top prize would certainly go Michele Bachmann for proclaiming that gay people could get married as long as they got married to people of a different gender. Among the surviving candidates, Mitt Romney would seem to be the obvious leader based on the sheer volume of positions he's taken in the course of his political career, generally depending on what political group he's trying to woo at any given moment, but I think Gingrich is probably the real winner.

His comments last year describing same-sex marriage as something that "fundamentally goes against everything we know" seem straightforward enough, but the former Speaker of the House saved his "A" game for the end of the year. When asked at a December campaign event in Iowa how he'd engage members of the gay community who want the right to marry, Gingrich told the man that those people should vote for President Obama. On the surface, that sounds fairly sensible until you remember that the President is actually ambivalent about gay-marriage as opposed to civil unions.

I could continue by talking about Rick Santorum's views, but if you're reading this you probably have access to Google, where a quick query will render any such recap superfluous. To what extent any given candidate's comments are expressions of genuine principle or political expediency is hard to say. Whatever the case may be, I can't shake the over-riding feeling that at least some of their opposition to gay-marriage stems from their insecurities about having another half of the population reject them as hateful people that no one would ever want to share their lives with them.

Do You Get Extra Points in the Polls for Being Extra Strident?

Though many people are proud to boast they never cross party lines when voting, my view is that if you show me a Republican worth voting for I'll vote for them. Former House member Connie Morella, was such a person. Former Senator (and current presidential candidate) Rick Santorum is not.

Not content with equating gay people to pedophiles, the action that led to his "google problem", Santorum has amped up the rhetoric as his poll numbers have ramped up ahead of the Iowa Caucuses. In addition to declaring his support of states restricting exceptionally private behavior, including contraception and sexual activity between consenting adults, Santorum has also declared his support for an amendment to the United States Constitution that would render any current same-sex marriages invalid.

This hypocrisy when it comes to state's rights would be bad enough, but the contempt for individual rights is especially rich. If this was about tax policy, environmental regulations or other elements of public life whose effects go beyond purely personal choices into the larger public space, you can bet Santorum would be banging the drum to keep the federal government out of it. For his stripe of Republican, though, individual liberties that involve sexuality always come with strings attached.

This would be beside the point if Santorum was still just a marginal candidate. Unfortunately, though Santorum seems unelectable on a national level, his recent rise in the Iowa polls means he has the potential to continue poisoning the political atmosphere with his especially rank form of hypocrisy.

As the "Google problem" Turns

Despite what are presumably his best efforts, Presidential candidate Rick Santorum continues to make more news in relation to his "Google problem" than anything related to his presidential bid or even substantive policy matters (those two things seem rather disconnected these days). The latest outburst is the former Pennsylvania senator's assertion that not only could Google alter the search results that put the scatological use of his name at the top of the results but also that their choice not to do so is politically motivated. I'm not sure whether Santorum appreciates the irony that his comments to Politico were made against the backdrop of a congressional hearing about whether Google is manipulating results to favor their own products.

Admittedly, it's a bit unfair to paint all of any party's politicians with the same brush based on any one person, but Santorum makes the GOP seem like a pretty thin-skinned bunch. President Obama has been likened to Hitler and had his name used to link him to terrorists and tyrants, and that's not even getting into the "birther" nonsense. In contrast, Santorum made offensive comments about an entire group of people and continues to play the victim because one of the objects of his scorn, columnist Dan Savage, found a clever way to respond in kind. Savage's method may have been distasteful, but then so were Santorum's initial comments to the Associated Press.

"In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality [of marriage]."

In closing, here's another thought that's probably escaped the man-who-would-be-POTUS. The reason his "Google problem" persists, aside from the fact he keeps talking about it, is that he hasn't done anything worthwhile to displace it. To any Republicans reading this, it seems to me that surely your party and our country deserve better than Santorum.

Political Savagery

For all but the most extreme partisans, being a political figure is virtually synonymous with having an identity crisis. The tension between the will to bring about meaningful change and the desire to stay in office long enough to accomplish it makes it almost inevitable. For some reason, Republican identity crises are especially pronounced.

Despite their party's historic election victory last year, and the attendant chest-thumping about their mandate from the American people, the party still seeks to present themselves as as victims of "media elites". Obviously, Sarah Palin is a poster child for this tendency, but she's not alone.

Lately former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has been in the news, partly as a potential 2012 Presidential candidate and partly for his "Google problem". Columnist Dan Savage, the man who created that "Google problem" (though many would say Santorum brought it on himself), was asked about it in the March 28th issue of Time as part of an interview about his "It Gets Better" project, intended to help gay kids deal with bullying. Savage's response perfectly crystalized the GOP's powerful/victim dilemma.

"Rick Santorum has said insanely offensive things about gay and lesbian couples. He was a two-term sitting U.S. Senator with a lot of power, and my readers and I are a bunch of jackasses without a lot of power. We made a joke at his expense, and now he [plays] the victim, which is all Republicans seem capable of doing these days."

Santorum's "Google problem" exists mainly because he hasn't done anything of note to push the scatological use of his name further down the search rankings. As long as he persists in casting himself as a victim, it seems unlikely he ever will.