Dan Savage Rips Santorum

Rather than just supply a link, I felt compelled to reproduce Dan Savage's superb post that appears on Andrew Sullivan's blog today. (Savage is a gay man who writes an extremely frank love advice column.) Here's what he had to say:

SANTORUM VS. FREEDOM: Rick Santorum, perhaps my favorite Republican U.S. Senator, opened his fool mouth last Thursday on NPR. As Bush has moved his party away from its longtime commitment to fiscal sanity, balanced budgets, and black ink, Santorum (and the wing of the GOP he represents) has moved the GOP away from its historic position on personal freedom. Basically Santorum’s GOP is all for personal freedom—so long as you freely choose to refrain from smoking pot, pulling feeding tubes out of brain dead loves ones, and doing what you like in your own bedroom (or, in the case of Msrg. Clark, your own hotel room).

[Santorum]
This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don't think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn't get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want.

Listening to Santorum, I found myself wondering what part of “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” he doesn't understand. That’s Amendement IV in the Ye Olde Bill of Rights. Call me ka-razy, but the right to shut the door to your bedroom and not have to worry about a sanctimonious, hypocritical, creepily fey U.S. Senator sneaking in and lifting back your blankets seems implicit.

And make no mistake, hetero readers: Santorum doesn’t just seek to stamp out the kind of relationship I enjoy with my longtime personal secretary. The Santorum wing of the GOP is targeting your privacy, and your pleasures, too. From porn (just as popular in red states as it is in blue) to divorce (more popular in red states than in blue) to masturbation (equally popular in red and blue states), the Santorums and Scalias and Bauers and Dobsons want to tell you how to live, who to love, and how exactly you should love ‘em. When Santorum made his famous “man on dog” comments he wasn’t just defending anti-gay sodomy laws, but anti-straight sodomy laws too. Santorum doesn’t just believe that the state should have the right to regulate gay sex out of existence, but two out of three most popular straight sex acts too. In his dissent in Lawrence, GOP and Bush/Santorum favorite Antonin Scalia didn't just bemoan the fact that the majority decision could lead to same-sex marriage rights, but that it would prevent the government from passing and/or enforcing laws against masturbation and pre-marital sex. Oh, the horror.

Whatever happened to the party that backed rugged individualism? Of personal freedom? Of autonomy? Remember Newt Gingrich’s stirring speech at the 1996 GOP convention in San Diego, in which he praised the way in which American freedom lead to the creation of beach volleyball? If that’s too painful, remember Dick Cheney saying freedom means freedom for everyone?

Personal freedom is like free speech: Some people are going to exercise their personal freedom and/or freedom of speech in ways that make you uncomfortable. So long as they’re not imposing themselves on you, they should be left alone. And, I’m sorry, Rick, but the haunting fear—or certain knowledge—that someone, somewhere, is enjoying himself in ways that you think are sinful does not qualify as an imposition.

[What more can I add? J. Miller]