Posted on 04/23/2003 3:14:07 PM PDT by AveMaria
If the Moderator will permit me, I want to post this message to express my concerns over the hysterical attacks on Sen. Rick Santorum, by the organized gay lobby.
I am new here, and I just registered, after having been a lurker for 3 weeks. I am from Philadelphia, and my representatives in the Senate are Arlen Spector and Rick Santorum. I am a political independent, who is fiscally liberal but conservative on social issues (I admire FDR, Truman, and LBJ). I have strong disagreements with Sen. Santorum's political philosophy mostly over issues concerning the poor and underprivileged in Philadelphia, and because I am from the Social Justice tradition of the Catholic Church, while he is more of a Calvinized Catholic on economic and social justice issues. But I take the teachings of the Church on traditional morality and family, very seriously. And part of those teachings obligate me to defend Santorum, a man I disagree with vigorously on economic issues, if I feel that he is being attacked unfairly. Here are some of the myths I want to challenge, as a way to help those who want to defend Santorum among progressive circles:
MYTH #1: The Constitution guarantees a right to Privacy.
The reality is that there is no right to privacy enshrined in the Constitution. There are many things you could do within the privacy of your own home that are illegal. It is illegal to use drugs in your own home, even if you may be using marijuana you cultivated as a potted plant at home, and did not buy from a dealer. And as Sen. Santorum pointed out so eloquently, polygamy, bigamy and Incest are illegal, even when practiced by consenting adults within the confines of their own home. What Sen. Santorum was trying to say is that - if a state has absolutely no right to regulate homosexual sodomy on privacy grounds, then on what legal basis would the state challenge a man living with three women, or a father having an affair with his 21 year old daughter?
MYTH #2: Sen. Santorum's statement challenged those strongly committed to diversity and multi-culturalism.
On the contrary. Most of the world's cultures and major religions do not agree on much. But one thing they all agree on, is that homosexual acts (not people) are sinful, repugnant, disgusting, sick, nauseating, and perverse. That is true if you are a traditionalist Catholic, a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, a conservative Protestant, an Orthodox Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a traditionalist Buddhist, a Sikh, etc. Even the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetan Muslims, who has ties to Hollywood elites, is on record as having described homosexuality as a sin. I was amazed to discover that even the peace-loving and Pacifist Bahais, oppose gay sex acts. What more multi-culturalism can you ask for?
MYTH #3: Criticism of homosexual Acts is the same as racism.
So many people have suffered from the pain of racism in the past, and there are many racial minorities who suffer today in terms of housing discrimination, discrimination in department stores, restaurant tables, and other humiliations. Too often in the past, the Christian Church failed to forcefully condemn racial bigotry as a sin. As a way to compensate for such glaring injustice, many well meaning white liberal Christians who care about social justice issues as much as I do, are too willing to endorse deviant acts as "okay", as a way to prove to themselves that they are not bigots.
But they fail to realize the fact that sodomy is BEHAVIORAL ACT, and not an unchangeable physiological feature like skin color. The pain of racism is very real, because people cannot change their skin color. But men can will themselves not to commit acts of sodomy, by keeping their pants zipped up. Racial minorities understand this very clearly, and that is why a majority of blacks and hispanics in California supported the recent ballot proposition defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.
MYTH #4: Texas sodomy laws punish people for who they are, not what they do, because gays are born that way.
Let us assume that homosexuality is partly genetic. If you go to any state with sodomy laws, and declare publicly that your orientation is homosexual, you will not be arrested. But if the state learns that you dropped your pants and "did it" with someone of the same gender, that constitutes a sex act in violation of the sodomy laws. You are not being punished for your self-declared orientation. You are being punished for specific sex acts. Get it?
Another example. My family has a long history of alcoholism, and I believe that alcoholism is genetic and runs in families. But, although I am genetically inclined toward alcoholism, I do not fear being arrested on a DUI, simply because of my Irish alcoholic genes. In order to be arrested, I actually have to go to a pub, fill my gut with alcohol, and then drive recklessly on the freeway. But if I can keep my "alcohol genes" under control, then so can a person with a "gay" orientation.
Almost all parents would like their children to marry someone in the same racial and religious groups as themselves- should interracial and interfaith marriages be banned?
The question isn't whether or not the states should be "allowed" to do that, it is whether or not such power is reserved to them under the Constitution. I don't see anywhere in the Constitution where it says that the right of the people to masturbate is inviolate or that the right to masturbate is an inalienable right or that the power of the States to ban masturbation is curtailed. Perhaps that was one of the grievances against King George, oppressive restrictions on the right to be a wanker; but Jefferson and Adams didn't mention it in the Declaration of Independence. Maybe Madison was too embarrassed to include notes about the right to masturbate in his notes of the Constitutional Convention. Or maybe it was just a backroom deal when the post-Civil War debates on the 14th Amendment were going on. You know, well, we can knock out those laws against masturbation at the same time we try to prevent state laws from oppressing the newly-freed slaves. Great constitutional moments.
I suspect that if you went to your local mall, seated yourself in a stall and engaged in such conduct, you might find yourself being prosecuted. I would say, however, that under the 4th Amendment the States have no power to search your home without probable cause to see if you are a wanker. On the other hand, seeing this post of yours might give them probable cause to suspect that you are indeed a wanker.
Do you really believe you could find any state legislature that would want to even consider such a law? Even if you did, don't you think the voters might install some new legislators at the next election and encourage them to spend their time on more pressing matters? That's the way our system of government should work.
Nice try, though.
Almost all parents would like their children to be heterosexually married, not in homosexual relationships.
Should fornication--that is, sexual relations between two unmarried people-- be banned as well, given your arguments above?
If my left hand doesn't consent, is it abuse ?
lol
I would bet you three cases of beer that you couldn't find any state legislature today which would want to even consider a law against sodomy, heterosexual or homosexual.
Muslim Americans and Orthodox Jews would say that eating pork is a disgusting abominable sin.
Should we ban pork because some people find the eating of it sinful?
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