The Santorum affair is the controversy that arose over U.S. Senator Rick Santorum's statements about homosexuality and the "right to privacy" in April 2003. In an interview with the Associated Press taped on April 7, 2003 and published April 20, 2003, Santorum stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a Constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts. Santorum described homosexual acts as part of a class of sexual behavior, including adultery, polygamy, pedophilia, incest, sodomy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family, as they are not monogamous and heterosexual. Democratic politicians, gay rights advocates, and other liberal commentators condemned the statements, while Republican politicians, religious conservatives, and other conservative commentators supported Santorum and called the condemnations unfair.
In the interview, when asked for his position on the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, Santorum said that the scandal involved priests and "post-pubescent men" in "a basic homosexual relationship" (not child sexual abuse), which led the interviewer to ask if homosexuality should be outlawed.
Santorum then brought up the then pending U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which challenged a Texas sodomy law, and went on to express that he had didn't have a problem with homosexuals, but "a problem with homosexual acts", that the right to privacy "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution", that "whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family," that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts which "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family".
When asked "OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?" his response ended "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."
In the original published AP story, Santorum was quoted as saying:
- 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.
- Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.
The day following the AP story, critics went on the attack. Democrats as well as gay rights groups demanded an apology. Gay rights groups condemning Santorum's remarks included the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, the Pennsylvania Log Cabin Republicans, OutFront, and the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) called on Santorum to step down as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
Early critics said they were offended by what they regarded as the comparison of homosexuals with adulterers, polygamists and people engaging in incest. Later, others broadened the criticism and pointed out that Santorum's position may also affect "normal" people, as Santorum said that he did not believe there is a Constitutional right to engage in private consensual sexual acts.
Santorum defended his remarks, stating that his comments were not intended to equate homosexuality with incest and adultery, but rather as a critique of the specific legal position that the right to privacy prevents the government from regulating consensual acts among adults, because he does not believe that there is a Constitutional right to privacy.
The dissenting opinion in Lawrence vs. Texas took a similar view - that since it had been ruled that the reason the Texas homosexuality law is unconstitutional is that states have no right to interfere with individuals' choices of sexual partners, then the same ruling logically implies that states have no right to legislate against incest, adultery, or any other sexual act.
