Democrats deny bedroom privacy rights
After Senator Rick Santorum links gay rights with privacy rights, Democrats, gay groups, and right wing Christian groups join in denying privacy rights in the bedroom.
Democrats blasted Republicans this week for claiming that bedrooms and privacy were related. After Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa) said that “if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual 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,” Democrats went on the offensive.
“Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules,” said Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass), “it is of no interest to me. Americans will not have the right to consensual sex within their own homes.” Kennedy added that he was especially concerned with “keeping prostitutes under control. No right to privacy will ever exist that allows consensual sex in exchange for money, gifts, or expensive candle-lit dinners.” According to Kennedy, such acts will continue to result in jail time even if the Supreme Court rules that states cannot make it illegal for men to have private, consensual sex together.
Senate minority leader Tom Daschle agreed. “Senator Santorum’s comments about privacy were unfortunate,” he said. “I hope he clarifies that he was not equating homosexuals having sex within their own bedroom as having anything to do with privacy rights.”
Daschle added that “we can work with our gay constituents without invoking privacy rights. Privacy rights are out of step with tolerance. How can we regulate tolerance if we support privacy rights?”
Gay groups joined conservative Christian groups in voicing their outrage against Santorum. A spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay advocacy organization, joined with Jerry Falwell Ministries in condemning “deviant sexual acts.” According to the Human Rights Campaign, “there is no place in America for privacy in the bedroom.”
“We’re urging the Republican leadership to condemn the remarks,” said David Smith, a spokesman for the gay rights group. “We condemn any attempt to link privacy rights with what we do in our bedroom.”
The Human Rights Campaign and Falwell Ministries stated jointly that they had temporarily put aside their differences to make it clear that both supported “jail time, and lots of it, for any consensual act of sex among adults that isn’t normal.” The two groups said that they had not yet agreed on what was not normal, but “basically, it’s anything that isn’t what we do.”
Santorum’s comments are being compared to Senator Trent Lott’s comments last year that if everyone had voted for a splinter Democrat in 1948, “the country would be better off.” Republicans forced Senator Lott to resign his senate leadership position for having, in President Bush’s words, “recommended voting for a Democrat. That is offensive and wrong.”
- Unedited section of the Associated Press interview
- The scariest part is that no one is paying attention to what Santorum really said: “If you say, there is no deviant as long as it’s private, as long as it’s consensual, then don’t be surprised what you get. You’re going to get a lot of things that you’re sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don’t really care what you do.”
- Democrats criticize Santorum
- Democrats appear to be outraged that Santorum’s opposition to privacy rights could have put a spotlight on bipartisan dislike of privacy rights in general. In retrospect it appears they had little to worry about.
- Mosman meets with gay rights supporters
- Bipartisan nominee for federal bench wrote that upholding a right to privacy would “open the door to legalizing other sex crimes, such as prostitution.”
- Lawrence v. Texas
- “The men were arrested, jailed overnight,” and then fined.
- Privacy issue is at the center of comments by Santorum
- “That may bring up the question of exactly how Texas expects to routinely enforce its anti-sodomy law. Then again, maybe we don’t really want to know.”
- Utah sect leader criticizes Santorum
- Polygamists disagree with Santorum’s lumping of polygamy in with homosexuality.
- Incest Repellent, Continued
- “Laws against incest apply in theory to both participants, and in this case they applied in fact. If you want to justify incest laws, don’t tell me why Ami Smith’s uncle belongs in jail. Tell me why she belongs there, too.”
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