Santorum had a full sweep of three states in the race for the presidential Republican nomination – Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado. Not only is he against abortion, a standard Republican platform, he’s also against birth control and gay marriage. So what are we to take away from a landmark day like yesterday, when a man like Santorum wins three states, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Karen Handel resigns over a scandal she waged against Planned Parenthood and a Californian court upholds that the gay marriage bill, Proposition 8 is unconstitutional for discriminating against gays and lesbians?
Let’s look a little further…
Rick Santorum – Republican Presidential Candidate For White Straight Men and Nobody Else – Winner of 3 States in One Day
Santorum is the same man who lost his 2006 Senate bid for reelection by a landslide 18 points in Pennsylvania for his polarizing views that alienated women and those in the gay and lesbian community. That’s quite a lot of people.
He condemned couples who live together without being married, and criticized women for working outside of the home, pointing to “radical feminism” as the primary culprit. Radical feminism, by the way, is the notion that women are people too. That’s really all it is. Kinda crazy, huh? It makes me concerned for his wife and daughters who are probably taught that it is best to leave the big decisions for the man in the house and not use their own brains. Forget the abortion debate, Santorum goes straight for the jugular in that he doesn’t believe that women should use or have access to birth control. He is completely and utterly against most of the services that Planned Parenthood is known for. His notions date so far back to women’s suffrage that I can’t help but wonder if he also thinks that women shouldn’t have the right to vote. There is no mistaking that for women, Santorum is a dangerous guy whose goals are to eliminate as many of our rights as he possibly can.
Santorum is not terribly likable by the gay and lesbian community either. He flatly opposes legalized gay marriage, as do many conservatives. However, he went one step further, citing gay marriage could result in legal protections for polygamy, incest and bestiality. Yeah, bestiality. Clearly he is out of touch, but it does leave one to wonder what he does in his own bedroom.
Karen Handel’s Lost War Against Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood came under attack this past week when Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced they were going to de-fund Planned Parenthood’s breast screening program, which they’ve contributed to for the past 20 years. Although Komen never admitted that the decision was political, there was never a doubt in the public eye, for those who support the choice to have abortion or those who do not. I’m sure Komen was surprised to find themselves the focus of intense public outrage, losing supporters in record numbers, while Planned Parenthood received an unexpected $3 million windfall from thousands of women who had received a variety of services from them, from breast screenings to reproductive health care when they were unable to afford it themselves. Tens of thousands of comments lit up Komen’s Facebook page condemning them for politicizing women’s heallh care. Feeling betrayed, long-time Komen supporters stated that they were cutting up their pink ribbons and discarding everything pink, refusing to purchase anything that would provide Komen with more funds to achive their new political agenda. Many believed that Komen’s recent VP Karen Handel was behind the unexpected decision,. Handel lost her 2010 bid for Georgia Governor on the platform of being against and planning to defund and dismantel Planned Parenthood. The Huffington Post stated that they have seen internal communication from Komen executives that supports the accusation that Handel instigated and helped plan the move to stop funding breast cancer screenings for low-income women at Planned Parenthood. After Komen recinded its decision, the public demanded Handel’s resignation, which came yesterday. The message was loud and clear, “Don’t politicize women’s health.” So how does a guy like Rick Santorum win on the same day that Handel hands over her resignation?
The Legal Right to Marry is Gaining Momentum for Gays and Lesbians
The decision to reject Proposition 8 was upheld by California’s 9th District Court as unconstitutional, citing that it was discriminatory against gays and lesbians. It is expected that proponents of the anti-gay bill will appeal yesterday’s latest ruling, sending it next to the Supreme Court for a final ruling.
Those in favor of the bill believe that marriage should only be between opposite-sex couples and feel that providing gays and lesbians with the same rights diminishes the very constition of marriage. Those who oppose the bill say that it discriminates against gays and Lesbians in fundamental ways, that their partners are not recognized in many legal and socially situations – from visiting partners in hospital emergency rooms to property rights after death to the privilege of not being required to testify against his or her spouse in any proceeding. Gay rights activists believe that states must recognize their civil unions and grant them the same rights as opposite-sex couples.
So in a day and age where it seems like women have made a very clear statement on their views about contraception and health care relating specifically to themselves, where gays and lesbians are one step closer to legalized marriage, a man like Rick Santorum who adamantly opposes all of the aforementioned is nominated for the Rupublican Presidential candidate in three state elections on the very same day.
Just like the middle class is eroding and leaving us with two distinct groups in the US – the rich and the poor, so too are our views polorizing us as a nation, where some are prepared to wage attack on the fundamental rights that have taken years to achieve.
In our world where we have so much to think about, together as a nation - war, education, the economy, jobs, international relations - it’s a wonder that anyone has the energy, desire or time to spend diminishing the rights of others to make themselves and their narrow, sexist, biggoted, and religious views the law of this land, the United States of America.
