In an interview on yesterday’s Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace pressed flailing Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum about his position that the now-extinct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy ought to be reinstated. The remarks Santorum made raising the horrifying specter of gay soldiers showering with other soldiers (*GASP!*) received all the media attention, but what seems to have thus far escaped notice is that he also cited discredited and dangerous “ex-gay” propaganda as a reason he believes that LGBT Americans, unlike African Americans, do not deserve their civil rights (for clarity’s sake, I’ve removed most of the sputters):
I mean, we’re talking about people who are simply different because of the color of their skin, not because of activities that would cause problems for people living in those, quote, ‘close quarters…’ I know the whole gay community is trying to make this the new Civil Rights Act — it’s not. It’s not the same. You are black by the color of your skin. You are not homosexual, necessarily, obviously, by the color of your skin… the idea that somehow or another that this is the equivalent, that being black and being gay is the same, is simply not true. There are all sorts of studies out there that suggest just the contrary. And there are people who were gay, and lived the gay lifestyle, and aren’t anymore. I don’t know if that’s the similar situation — I don’t think that’s the case with anybody that’s black. So it’s not the same and I know people try to make it the same, but it is not. It is behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that makes it [sic] all of the difference when it comes to serving in the military.
Santorum clearly suffers from a chronic case of the Gay Hysteria — he’s obsessed with gay people, gay sexual activities, gay soldiers in the shower, gay people having gay sex… in fact, he brings up gay topics with a frequency approaching the level of compulsion (take note, Karen). The former senator is so fixated on gay sexual acts that he is apparently unable to discuss gay people without talking about them in flagrante delicto. In fact, I’d be interested (horrified?) to know just how much time Rick Santorum spends thinking about gay sex.
Oh and yeah, by the way, the whole “there are people who were gay… and aren’t anymore” thing? Pretty sure nobody agrees with you, Rick. It’s not possible to change from gay to straight and you can’t pray away the gay, so you’re going to have to be a little more creative the next time you go fishing for reasons to justify your bigotry. Thanks for playing.
Video of the sputtering Santorum here, courtesy of HuffPost Politics:
