This post is one of a series that I plan to post over the next week or so. The purpose of these posts is to pick at the social conservatism of several American politicians who are each campaigning for the endorsement of the Republican party for the 2012 Presidential election. For this, I offer no fucking apology whatsoever.
The candidates that I have chosen for this tarring and feathering are throwing their political weight behind ideas and policies that endanger the rights and lives of many, many people in this country. Their "talking points" promote radical theories that are ignorant, shortsighted, and diminish the personhood of many American citizens. You don't have to be gay to know that you want a good life for your brother who is. You don't have to be a woman to want proper health care and reproductive options for your daughter. You don't have to be (insert any religion other than Christianity/Catholicism) to agree that if you don't want your own faith to determine how the state treats YOU, that it wouldn't be appropriate for anyone else to be treated that way.
If you vote, and I hope like hell that you do, please think about how things are and how they will be, not how they supposedly "used to be" or "should be". Please don't vote for some asshole like this guy...
From Wikipedia:
Richard John "Rick" Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum is a member of the Republican Party and was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
Santorum is considered both a social and fiscal conservative. He is known for his stances on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Social Security, intelligent design, homosexuality, and the Terri Schiavo case.
In March 2007, Santorum joined the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC. He was to primarily practice law in the firm’s Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., offices, where he was to provide business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. In addition to his work with the firm, Santorum also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and was a contributor to Fox News Channel.
Santorum is a candidate for president of the United States in the 2012 election. He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011, and formally announced his candidacy on June 6.
I think I've made it abundantly clear that I am a social liberal. Where a social conservative would as ask "Why?" with a tone of disgust, my typical response is to laugh and ask "Why Not?" I'm pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and pro-most-things-that-make-your-grandma-say-"eww".
That being said, I want to one day see safe birth control products as easy to obtain as Advil. I would love to see thorough sex education that would be available in schools from an early age, to help reduce the number of abortions. I'd like to see a day where the average age that a woman becomes a mother is closer to thirty than it is to twenty, and that any two responsible adult people who share a home together where love and devotion is present, can raise children into healthy adults.
That might sound like La-La land at the moment, but I do feel it's increasingly possible to get us there (or damn close) at some point. The main thing that keeps us America from this, is fear of change. Fear is something that Rick Santorum (and the other candidates I will highlight later) utilize in their rhetoric to keep masses of people in a constant cycle of blame and anxiety.
Can you imagine a world without birth control? Rick Santorum thinks that birth control is "harmful to women and harmful to society".
No, really.
He said that.
"I voted for birth control because it is not the taking of a human life" - Rick Santorum
From OnTheIssues.org - Rick Santorum
Voted YES on limiting death penalty appeals. (Apr 1996) - Rick Santorum
Voted NO on replacing death penalty with life imprisonment. (Apr 1994) - Rick Santorum
"I don't think it works. I think it's harmful to women. I think it's harmful to our society to have a society that says that sex outside of marriage is something that should be encouraged or tolerated." - Rick Santorum
From OnTheIssues.org - Rick Santorum
Plan B morning-after pill is abortion, and dangerous. (Sep 2006)
Exception for rape & incest ok, even though they take a life. (Sep 2006)
Voted YES on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. (Jul 2006)
Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime. (Mar 2004)
Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life. (Mar 2003)
Voted YES on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions
Well, shit.. if we can't prevent unwanted pregnancies, how the hell are we going to afford all of these kids??
Oh, wait..
From OnTheIssues.org - Rick Santorum
Voted YES on welfare block grants. (Aug 1996)
Voted NO on eliminating block grants for food stamps. (Jul 1996)
Voted YES on allowing state welfare waivers. (Jul 1996)
Voted NO on funding smaller classes instead of private tutors. (May 2001)
Voted NO on funding student testing instead of private tutors. (May 2001)
Unless you feed them and ensure that public education is faulty, you're never going to be able to maintain an easily manipulated welfare-class. How ELSE are a few of us going to get rich if the average American citizen is allowed the opportunity to rise above the poverty line?
But surely Rick Santorum can have enough empathy for women to understand that rape victims don't need to be re-victimized by carrying the unwanted fetus of their attacker, right?
Even in the case of rape or incest, Rick Santorum believes that to abort the fetus of the sonofabitch that raped you would be the same thing as murder... what, what?
"I would advocate that any doctor who performs an abortion be criminally charged for doing so. I'd never support a criminalization of abortion for mothers, but I do for people who perform them."
So as long as you risk it with the coat hanger or pill overdose, its fine then? Why would you hold the doctor accountable and not the mother? It is the pregnant woman who makes the choice to terminate her pregnancy, so what.. she's not capable of understanding the ramifications of that choice, so you go after the DOCTOR? Oh, don't fret.. he went into more detail at the Republican debate in Iowa last month..
“Would you allow no exceptions for cases of rape on incest?” Fox News host, Byron York asked. “Polls have shown that large majorities of Americans support some exceptions for abortion. Are your views too much, even for many conservatives to support?”
“That child is an innocent victim,” Santorum replied. “To be victimized twice would be a horrible thing. It is an innocent human life, genetically human from the moment of conception. We in America should be big enough to try to surround ourselves and help women in those terrible situations who have been traumatized already. To put them through another trauma of an abortion, I think is too much to ask. So I would absolutely stand and say that one violence is enough.”
This man (who will never know what it is to be pregnant) seems to be making at least two frightening suggestions with these comments:
1: If women do not want to carry a fetus, however it got in there, to term, they had better perform the procedure themselves because NO one will be there to help them.
2: Women should not be charged for doing this (should they survive it) because they're obviously too emotionally and mentally unstable to make good decisions.
Rick Santorum, you're a fucking asshole. Your assessment of, and lack of respect FOR women and what's good for them leads me to believe that your own mother slapped you around either too much, or not nearly enough.
As if he isn't making a big enough dickhead of himself, Santorum makes it abundantly clear that he wants people to remain second-class citizens if they aren't heterosexual. This shows a lot of gall for a guy who's a walking anal sex joke, himself.
Gay marriage is going to happen, and it should. At present, the best that a non-homosexual couple can hope for in most states is a civil union, which is ONLY recognized by the state in which it was filed. A civil union receives no federal recognition, and does not allow couples the same benefits of legal protection that marriage does. Here are lists from About.com that shows the disparity between the two types of partnerships:
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Let's not overlook the fact that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people are being marginalized by Republicans who still seem to hang onto this bullshit idea that people are making a conscious decision in regard to their sexuality. Hell, even devout members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints at Brigham-Young University (who are not really known for being cool with things that are NOT traditionally sanctioned by LDS) have presented studies about biological indications of homosexuality.
Rick Santorum also apparently believes that the "gay agenda" is so well-organized and hell-bent on destroying the country, that he is the target of a "gay jihad". Nice.
I have a child, and I plan on teaching her about people she's going to meet in her life. I don't want my daughter to run about wringing her hands like a helpless, clueless ninny, the first time she runs into a same sex couple. I understand the failing that human beings have when it comes to the division of "us" and "them", and I don't want my daughter to believe that another human being is not part of "us" based on religion OR sexuality. I hope like hell that she gets a well-rounded view of the world, as its changing, in school. That's the best way school can support what I teach her at home. I WANT my daughter to come home and ask me what "transgender" means, so I can teach her empathy. I WANT my daughter to see families with two mommies or two daddies. If she can come home and talk to me about it, I can then ensure that she understands and she won't inadvertently bully someone for being different than her. I don't want my daughter to be an insensitive little bitch or a helpless pain in the ass that can't handle life as it comes up.
From OnTheIssues.org - Rick Santorum
Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)
Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
Sorry, man. The world is changing for the better, and you not only want to put on the brakes, you want to send us backward.
Here's the really fucked up thing.. Conservative politicians harp on this "get big government out of our lives!" bullshit all day long, yet who the hell is first in line when it comes to regulating the rights of individuals on the basis of the most intimate and personal areas of their lives?
I vote NO on you, Rick Santorum. Fuck off. I would prefer to enjoy sex and not pop out a kid every time I get off.
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