Soon they’ll be marrying multiple dogs.

The Republican position on sexual freedoms and, of course, gay marriage, was best summed up by Sen. Rick Santorum (*snort*), when, in April of 2003, he famously said:

If the Supreme Court says that 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. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that’s sort of where we are in today’s world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution.

Republicans like to pretend that a nonexistent slippery slope exists here, declaring things like “what’s to keep those crazy queers from marrying dogs?” (I wasn’t aware that a canine could form a contract.) So they work to make sex illegal, ban birth control, etc.

So I’m a bit puzzled by President Bush’s new choice for the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt. As the former governor of Utah, and a Mormon, this quote from the August 24, 1998 Salt Lake Tribune isn’t altogether surprising:

“It’s clear to me in this state and many others, they have chosen not to aggressively prosecute it. I assume there is a legal reason for that. I think it goes well beyond tradition.” The governor mentioned arguments others have made that plural marriage may be an expression of religion that is protected under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

I’m not arguing with the man — there is, in fact, a compelling legal premise for the legality of polygamy. But given the frenzy that many Republicans have whipped themselves into on the gay sex / straight sex / gay marriage / polygamy / incest / cats sleeping with dogs slippery slope, it’s amazing that the head of Health and Human Services — not, like, the Defense Department, but the agency that actually concerns itself with marriage and sex — would leap 3/4 of the way down that alleged slope, presumably approving of sexual freedoms and gay marriage along the way.

A radical turnaround for the Bush administration? (Bush does, after all, support same-sex civil unions.) Or simple hypocrisy? If the past four years are any indicator, I suspect the latter. But stranger things have happened.

(Via Daily Kos)

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

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