Columnist Michael Kinsley once defined a “gaffe” as an occasion where a politician accidentally tells the truth. The truth of this observation was confirmed recently when Senator Rick Santorum made his controversial statement about homosexual rights.

Discussing a Texas sodomy case currently before the Supreme Court, Santorum said, “If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
Reacting immediately to Santorum’s comments, gay rights groups demanded his resignation. “We find what Santorum said as egregious as what Senator Lott said last December,” complained David Smith, director of the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual activist group. Others, such as Patrick Guerriero of the Log Cabin Republicans, another gay rights lobby, termed Santorum’s statement “divisive and mean-spirited.”

In reality, there is no comparison between the remarks made by Santorum and those made some time ago by Trent Lott. Lott had suggested, half in jest, that life was better in the Old South of former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. Lott’s remarks could reasonably be interpreted as implying a defense of racial segregation—a position entirely outside the mainstream of public debate. Lott was rightly chastised for his irresponsible and immoral comments.

Santorum, by contrast, was raising a legitimate policy issue. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as many on the political left, frequently demand that the government “stay out of our bedrooms” and permit as legal all actions between “consenting adults.” These groups want the Supreme Court to affirm a broadly-construed “privacy right” even though the U.S. Constitution does not list any such right.

Santorum’s point was simply this: If you legalize all behavior between consenting adults, you have to legalize such actions as bribery and insider-trading. Blackmail, too, typically occurs between consenting parties. In the sexual domain, as Santorum noted, bigamy and polygamy involve consenting adults, as do adultery and several forms of incest.

The public policy issue raised by Santorum is a simple one: where do you draw the line? Incidentally Santorum was not equating homosexual conduct with bigamy, polygamy, adultery, or incest. “There is no moral equivalency there,” he said.
Nor was Santorum calling for police officers to pry into anyone’s bedroom. Rather, he was asking: if there is a constitutionally-guaranteed sodomy right between consenting adults, doesn’t that mean that bigamists and polygamists can also claim a constitutionally-protected “right to privacy”?

In fact, the Supreme Court stated several years ago in Bowers v. Hardwick that there is no constitutional “right to sodomy.” Santorum was doing nothing more than arguing for the law as it currently exists.

So far none of Santorum’s critics has answered the public policy issue he has raised. Rather, they seem to regard all criticism of homosexual rights as a form of bigotry and “hate speech.” They want to drive anyone who has moral reservations about homosexual rights out of the public square. They are the intolerant ones—the members of the Intolerance Brigade.

To his credit, Santorum has refused to apologize or step down. He is right to assert that the simple criterion of “consenting adults” is too broad for responsible public policy.

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