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Ayatollah Santorum
While the Bush administration works to prevent an Islamic theocracy in Iraq, it’s also busy supporting Senator Rick Santorum, who’s dead set on enshrining his antigay religious beliefs in U.S. law. Could it be the Republicans’ “big tent” is nothing more than a white sheet in disguise?
By John Sonego, Director of Communications, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
An Advocate.com exclusive posted April 29, 2003
There’s something oddly familiar about the images of Sunni Muslims in Karbela, Iraq, celebrating their newfound freedom by lacerating their own heads. The moral and religious certitude behind such behavior is a lot like Rick Santorum’s recent public self-immolation during an AP interview and in his subsequent public comments. He’s so sure he is right that fairness, logic, and compelling self-interest all take a back seat to the pious platitudes he uttered with such conviction.
Don’t get me wrong. Santorum deserves a lot of credit for speaking honestly about what he believes. It’s good to have someone of his stature distill the Religious Right’s discriminatory message so articulately. Their “love the sinner but hate the sin” credo, which is at the core of Santorum’s arguments, is bandied about so much that you’d think Jesus said it himself.
The truth is, he didn’t. The Jesus of the Gospels didn’t take kindly to those who were more concerned with imposing their dogma on others than on showing compassion. And I suspect that if Jesus roamed the halls of the Senate today, he’d probably be overturning desks and raising a ruckus, just like he did when he drove the money changers from the temple 2,000 years ago.
In this country, we watch the religious fervor in Iraq with a mixture of curiosity and concern. The sight of a million men on pilgrimage, blood running down their faces, transfixed in a moment of religious ecstasy, seems as far removed from our everyday life as intergalactic space travel. The fact that Iraq might become another theocracy modeled on its neighbor Iran seems almost inconceivable.
Yet that same religious fervor that drives the move towards theocratic government in Iraq is alive and well in this country, albeit in a slightly more palatable form. Rick Santorum’s unguarded opinions are nothing more than a mirror reflecting the undercurrents running through Washington, D.C., today. When White House staff clamor to demonstrate their devotion in daily small group Bible studies; when our attorney general espouses a particularly vindictive form of fundamentalism; and, when our president’s State of the Union address is deliberately sprinkled with buzzwords designed to communicate subliminally to the faithful, there’s not a whole lot of difference between their brand of public piety and that of the mullahs who want political control.
And that’s why those of us who believe in fairness and equality for all have to be very, very concerned when a political leader uses his position as a bully pulpit to promulgate a peculiar form of piety that flies in the face of our Constitution.
Sadly, the folks who most try to wrap the flag around their religious convictions like to paint a distorted picture of our history. No matter what the fundamentalists tell you, we were not founded as a Christian nation. Religious freedom did indeed drive many of the original colonists to this country—but those colonists quickly learned they had to navigate their religious differences and learn to live cooperatively if they were to survive in the New World.
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and many of the Founding Fathers held religious beliefs decidedly to the left of today’s Republican leadership. They lived in an age that embraced the notion that man is the measure of all things—and were fundamentally opposed to a system of government that made enforcing religious precepts more important than individual liberty. Each had lived through the “Great Revival” of the early 18th century, and had rejected Jonathan Edwards’s claim they were all “sinners in the hands of an angry God” and embraced instead a view of a deity who more closely resembled Aunt Clara on Bewitched.
If there’s one thing history shows us, it’s always dangerous when theocrats—real or aspiring—have power. And it is particularly dangerous to those whose lives are deemed outside the range of what those ideologues deem acceptable. I don’t care if Rick Santorum doesn’t have a problem with me as an individual but hates how I chose to live my life as a gay man. But I’d better care that he believes he has the right to decide what I can and can’t do in the privacy of my own home. That belief must be challenged with every tool our Constitution allows.
We all need to be very clear about this. There is no political, moral, or social justification for Santorum’s attempt to pass off intolerance as an expression of faith. And the Republican Party line that says Santorum is actually an “inclusive” kind of guy is nothing more than a tacit endorsement of that philosophy. Could it be the “big tent” the Republicans say covers their party is nothing more than a white sheet in disguise?
While the Republican lockstep support of their golden boy is particularly disheartening, I am encouraged by the firestorm of attention in the media and the public discussion about his comments. For the first time in a long time, we are seeing a healthy mainstream skepticism about the “love the sinner, hate the sin” mantra the religious right uses against gay people to place limits on our freedom. And that gives me hope.
There is an object lesson for Santorum and others who seek to force our compliance to their religious beliefs. You can’t impose an oppressive theology on a free people and get away with it for long.
I don’t believe in Rick Santorum’s god. I don’t believe I should be made to live as if I did. And I would suspect that even those Americans who would agree with Santorum would hesitate to try and enforce those beliefs by writ of law.