RICK SANTORUM--A WELLSTONE REPUBLICAN

Sex and Civility (Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, and Joanna Schubert, April, 28, 2003, The CBS News)

Last week's calls for the ouster of Republican Sen. Rick Santorum from the GOP leadership after his remarks linking homosexual acts to polygamy, bigamy and incest seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist defended Santorum, and, on Friday, Ari Fleischer said President Bush thought Santorum was an "inclusive man." Conservatives have started alleging a political motive behind the story. Late last week, Robert Novak reported that the AP reporter who interviewed Santorum, Laura Jakes Jordan, is married to Jim Jordan, campaign manager for Sen. John Kerry's Democratic presidential campaign.

"Jordan herself is pretty suspect," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post reports that "Jim Jordan says he didn't know 'with any specificity' what Santorum had told his wife and (said) that Kerry was one of several Democrats who issued statements at the request of the Hotline political digest. "Even by the usual standards of the right-wing attack machine," Jim Jordan said, "this is just stupid, vicious and sexist."

Democratic candidates, meanwhile, were generally hitting home runs on the gay-rights groups scorecards. Howard Dean, who signed legislation legalizing civil unions for same sex couples in Vermont, has been working the gay and lesbian activist network heavily during the early phases of the campaign. Six of the nine Democratic presidential candidates - Gephardt, Kerry, Braun, Kucinich, Sharpton and Dean - support civil unions.

While the other three Democratic candidates - Lieberman, Edwards and Graham - "stopped short of endorsing them," none has opposed them. Lieberman and Edwards say this should be left up to individual states, and Graham said that the issue "needs more study."

All nine Democrats support benefits for domestic partners, while President Bush opposes them. Civil unions are controversial among the public, with Democrats generally supportive and Republicans opposed. Republican pollster Whit Ayres told the Boston Globe that favoring civil unions could hurt a Democratic candidate in the general election. "The dividing line between the blue states and the red states was primarily a cultural dividing line rather than an economic one. The whole issue of civil unions reinforces the differences between the parties. It seals the deal in the South" for the Republicans, Ayres said

It's a simple truth of American politics that there is no price to be paid for opposing gay "rights". To the contrary, as the vote on the Defense of Marriage Act demonstrated, you can oppose them and still be an icon even on the Left. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 28, 2003 2:22 PM