Tag: Rick Santorum

On the campaign trail, Rick Santorum rarely passes up an opportunity to pontificate on his favorite subject: the evils of gay marriage and parenthood. Speaking at a boarding school in New Hampshire on Friday, Santorum cited an unnamed “anti-poverty expert” to claim that children are better off having a parent in prison who abandoned them than having two same-sex parents.

This wasn’t just a hypothetical some children in the audience, at least three of whom had gay parents, the Los Angeles Times reports:

For the second time in as many days, Rick Santorum waded into the issue of gay marriage, suggesting it was so important for children to have both a father and mother that an imprisoned father was preferable to a same-sex parent.

Citing the work of one anti-poverty expert, Santorum said, “He found that even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids were still better than no father at all to have in their children’s lives.”

Allowing gays to marry and raise children, Santorum said, amounts to “robbing children of something they need, they deserve, they have a right to. You may rationalize that that isn’t true, but in your own life and in your own heart, you know it’s true.” […]

The students at Dublin School, which runs from ninth through 12th grade, were primed for Santorum’s visit, said headmaster Brad Bates. He said three students in the audience had gay parents, though they were not among those who asked about the topic.

It’s unclear to which “anti-poverty” expert Santorum was referring, or what the expert’s study said, but it is clear that Santorum is likely distorting it.

He isn’t wrong that numerous studies have highlighted the importance of keeping children connected to parents who may be in prison, but none of them include any actual research on comparisons with same-sex families.

In reality, studies have consistently shown that same-sex couples are just as capable of raising children as opposite-sex couples, and any attempt to suggest otherwise is not only wrong but hurtful to same-sex families and the children they are raising.
(source)

That’s it Rick.  Unemployment is steadily improving because America knows YOU are on the way to save the day…

Dat’s it.

After Rick Santorum’s surprising second-place finish in Iowa, ThinkProgress compiled a list of his top 10 most outrageous claims. Here are just a few:

ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”

WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.

Read more at ThinkProgress

Well, how galling.

You could almost imagine the above quote coming from the LGBT community.  Basically, to conservatives, you can imagine gays and lesbians saying ‘we all want to live our lives; let’s not make everyone live according to someone else’s ideas of morality and values.  This is America.’

And yet – you have the daughter of ultra-conservative Rick Santorum giving ‘permission’ to the LGBT community to ‘live the way they want’ but gays shouldn’t ‘project’ our values even as her father ‘projects’ HIS discriminatory values to make sure gays and lesbians don’t have equal rights.

Rick Santorum recently said in an interview that “same-sex couples can contract for everything” except government benefits.” That “exception” includes any federal recognition and the over 1,100 rights that come with that recognition. How kind.

In the above referenced interview – in almost the same breath – Elizabeth Santorum says “she has gay friends who support her father’s candidacy based on his economic and family platforms.”

Oh really? I’d really like to meet these ‘gay friends.’

To be honest, I don’t believe they exist. What kind of self-loathing person supports a man who says you don’t deserve they same rights HE has? In the United States of America?

What person says “well, I really support his economic policy because money is more important to me than self-worth?” Who says “I like Rick Santorum because even though he doesn’t want MY family to be recognized as a family, I think he’s great…?”

I go back to the beginning of my post.  How galling.