Talk:Santorum controversy

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on September 16, 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

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[edit] Naming of article

Please note that the phrase "Santorum affair" to describe Santorum's comments and the response it engendered has been used about equally by both sides of the issue. Of course, the left sees the affair being about Santorum's position, whereas the right sees the affair being about the way that Santorum was attacked for his position.

Well, clearly it's both.

The left:

  • objects to his position (or their interpretation of it)
  • attacked him

The right:

  • support Santorum's position
  • object to leftist 'distortions' of it
  • and of course, aren't happy with any 'attacks' on him

--Uncle Ed

In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family. Furthermore

This interpretation of Santorum's remarks is the hinge on which the entire issue turns. We should be careful about it.

I read the interview twice (around a week ago), and I don't recall his specifically calling incest, polygamy, bestiality and homosexual acts "deviant" behavior. If my recollection is faulty, a quick glance at the transcript will settle this.

Based on both my reading of the transcript, and on my general knowledge of conservative attitueds toward sex, I would say that Santorum was making a subtly but significantly different point: He was saying that if American adults are accorded the legal right of doing whatever they want in private then this kind of right would lead to the breakdown of society. This is his over-arching point.

Now, his critics have drawn a conclusion from this point and thus given his remarks an interpretation. This means, they say, that he's calling homosexuality a deviant act and "comparing it to" incest, etc.

They can interpret his remarks any way they want, and we should publish their interpretation. But we should also be VERY CLEAR about the distinction between:

  1. what Santorum said and what HE THINKS HE MEANS by it; and
  2. what CRITICS THINK HE MEANT

I'm not saying the critics are correct or incorrect about their interpretation, or about making attacks on him. I'm just saying that the Wikipedia should be careful not to endorse, and not to even SEEM TO ENDORSE, any particular side. --Uncle Ed 14:50, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Mr. Poor believes that the line

In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family.

is an improper interpretation of Santorum's remarks. Would he accept

In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family.

? If he needs the direct quotations, I'd be happy to provide. --The Cunctator 16:11, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I admit to being unsure about both (a) the exact wording of the line and (b) what Santorum meant by it. The direct quotations would be a big help, sir.

Our readers would probably like to know exactly why critics took offense at Santorum's remarks. "So you're saying homosexuality is as bad as incest", seems to be how they are interpreting it.

My point is not that they misinterpreted him, because that would make me an advocate; my role must remain merely that of an impartial reporter. Rather, my point is that the Wikipedia article should say that they interpreted his remarks as blah, blah, blah -- then the article should explain why that interpretation was offensive to them, if it's not patently obvious. --Uncle Ed 16:19, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Exactly. Okay, going over the interview again I believe that this is what Santorum was trying to say, in addition to his disagreement with a Constitutional right to privacy:

In the interview Santorum describes 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.

This is getting close to using exactly his language. Eliding the discussion of the constitutional right to privacy:

"I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual...bigamy...polygamy...incest... adultery...behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. 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's not to pick on homosexuality. [The definition of marriage] is not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. "

And what people interpreted him as saying is:

Homosexuality is as bad as incest, polygamy, and bestiality. It should be outlawed.

Santorum's rebuttal is:

  1. I think homosexuality is different from engaging in homosexual acts. Homosexuals make a choice to engage in homosexual acts.
  2. I'm not saying homosexual acts are as bad as bestiality; I'm just saying they're both bad for society.
  3. I'm not saying homosexual acts should be outlawed; I'm just saying that I am against any laws which prevent people from passing laws to prevent such acts, and that I am against any state lifting restrictions on homosexual acts.

--The Cunctator 17:06, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. We agree that Santorum's POV includes #1 & #2 and (probably) #3. People are always amazed when you and I agree on how to write an article; I wonder why that is... ;-) --Uncle Ed 18:42, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] From VfD

  • Santorum affair - page title is idiosyncratic and non-NPOV, split of page was done by User:The Cunctator against consensus of people on Rick Santorum. Daniel Quinlan 10:10, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)
    • merge and redirect. --Jiang | Talk 10:18, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • How is the title POV? Possibly take that thread discussion to Talk:Santorum affair, where someone has already commented saying it isn't. Onebyone 11:48, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • The term is idiosyncratic, assigning "affair" is a comparison to the Iran-Contra Affair or another such event. It wasn't possible or necessary to assign any name until the material was prematurely split off of the Rick Santorum page which covered the material quite adequately and more neutrally.
    • Keep the content - but either merge it with Rick Santorum or take stuff from there and merge it here. As a Brit who's never heard of all this, I found the article both interesting and neutral. Merriam-Webster defines 'affair' as: "a matter occasioning public anxiety, controversy, or scandal" .. and it strikes me that this is exactly what this is, else people wouldn't be getting so hot under the collar about it. Spellbinder
    • Rename to Santorum controversy if you don't like the word "affair", and keep the article separate from Rick Santorum. Keep a redirect from santorum (word) to Savage Love, or move the 'coinage' material to santorum (word) with a link from both "Savage" articles. Uncle Ed 15:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep, but perhaps retitle. Although I'm against this guy and his opinions, I think the article is pretty much NPOV and it certainly needed splitting-off to stop the page getting too big. Santorum affair is acceptable to me, but I would not have a problem with Santorum controversy or Santorum statement on homosexuality if that was more widely acceptable. Anjouli 16:43, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep (as another disinterested brit). Santorum controversy is probably a better title. -- Finlay McWalter 17:16, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Delete. Thie content could be put back where it was. This is part of a larger issue as DanielQuinlan suggests. See User_talk:The_Cunctator/Agglomeration for discussion. -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 17:23, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Delete. This stuff is part of Rick Santorum's story and that's were it belongs, rather than being separated out for whatever pointscoring game is going on. Bmills 17:31, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep and retitle. Certainly don't delete the material. The article is good. Perhaps it could be merged back on the Rick Santorum page although I continue to think this creates problems with the balance of that page. The title or entry "Santorum affair" isn't too good. I think the title should be phrased in a way that suggests a close connection with the Rick Santorum page and also includes an approximate date as an identification (it's possible that he may spark another controversy someday). Something like "Rick Santorum April 2003 controversy." In effect that means it will be probably never be found as a direct entry, and most likely will be found only by searching or following a link from the Rick Santorum page, but that's OK. There isn't going to be any standard, generally accepted short name for the controversy, at least not for a while. Dpbsmith 17:45, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Currently there is a lot of overlap between this article and Rick Santorum. The treatment at Rick Santorum is not nearly as good as the one here; there everything is looked at from the angle of the catholic priest affair, which I think never was the main point, not for Rick nor for his critics. Furthermore, the crucial main quote that was in all the papers and started the whole controversy isn't even given there. Anyway, we should either have a very short summary at Rick Santorum linking here (the option I prefer), or merge this article back into Rick Santorum (many people above seem to be against this). AxelBoldt 21:38, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about this paragraph:

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.

I understand the argument, and I'm not an American (and certainly not a Texan) but from my understanding no states have legislated against incest or adultery. This statement would make more sense if it said "pedophilia," which is illegal, but I don't want to change it since I don't know what the dissenting opinion actually said. moink

I'm almost sure there IS legislation against incest, but for the life of me, I may just be taking cultural norms and putting them in a law in my head. Pretty sure adultry is not legislated against. Lyellin 21:54, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)
Incest is illegal in many (most? all?) states, though they define it differently in each jurisdiction. Adultery is not illegal anywhere, AFAIK, though it could be considered a violation of (the marriage) contract. Did the court really rule that the state may not interfere in any single individual's choice of sex partners? Or did they rule that two individuals may freely choose to have sex? (this is very different, since children are not of an age that their choice matters) Tuf-Kat 22:00, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)
I'm under the impression that while you can't *marry* your brother, as long as you're both adults no one's going to arrest you for having sex. But I could very well be wrong. moink 23:46, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I believe that for the most part, incest is unfortunately involving a consenting adult, and a related child too young to legally give consent (however I have no statistics on this). When such is the case, incest is a particular subset of pedophilia, which the US does have laws against. --zandperl 23:21, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, but the law is against pedophilia, not incest. So again, right now incest and adultery are not illegal anywhere in the states AFAIK. So somebody might have said that, but it doesn't make sense. moink 23:25, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Commentators

This edit deleted the descriptive word "liberal" for commentators in the first (anti-Santorum's-remarks) group. However, the phrase "conservative commentators" was retained to describe the second (pro-Santorum's-remarks) group. If "liberal" is unacceptable for a description of the first group of commentators, maybe the word "progressive" will be OK? (Even if the logic is that not all commentators who disagreed with Santorum were to the left of center, the vast majority surely were, so it's not wholly inappropriate.) If "progressive" is deleted, fairness would dictate the deletion of the later "conservative" as well. (Oh, and before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I do not agree with Santorum - I think that whatever two consulting adults do in private is their business.) Noel (talk) 6 July 2005 13:49 (UTC)

"progressive" is a pretty loaded word, since it suggests that everyone else is "regressive." I'd be surprised if many nonconservatives defended Santorum, though it's certainly not impossible. Dave (talk) July 7, 2005 12:46 (UTC)

[edit] Roman Catholic Church

  • "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."

Did he really say this? If so, was there really not complaints that he appeared to have no understanding of the scandal since he was suggesting the scandal was about priests performing normal homosexual acts whereas it was actually about priests sexually abusing children and although the church appears to have gotten worked up over gay priests, that was a completely different issue... Nil Einne 17:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but one perspective that might inform how this issue is written up is the POV that there is a difference between pedophilia(the tendency to abuse little kids) and homosexual pederasty (male-to-male sex with adolescents who are post-pubescent). The distinction some want to make is that a man who abuses a little boy is not necessarily homosexual; he is just a pedophile who gets off by having sex with children. When the young person becomes post-pubescent, then it is not necessarily pedophilia although it could be considered some sort of legal prohibition like statutory rape or sex with minors, which ios different than pedophilia. MPS 17:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
You might be missing my point. The issue I was raising is that it appears to be that Santorum has no understanding whatsoever of the Catholic priest scandal. Many of the abuses were against children. Please see Roman Catholic sex abuse cases. (Some Catholic commentators like to ignore the children and pretend it only involved post-pubescent males so they can try and make the issue about gay priests instead of pedophile priests of course many children were involved). I'm rather surprised that this issue was not raised by commentators. (There is also the issue that even when it comes to post-pubescent boys, it's not particularly clear whether they were choosing the boys because of sexual preference or because of 'access' (situational) reasons). Nil Einne 18:49, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Most significantly tho, the reason why anyone cared was because they were abusing people who they had power over. Whether they were homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual or asexual or whatever is irrelevant. If they were having consensual orgies with members of their congregation, there may have been some scandal, especially in the eyes of the Catholic Church but it wouldn't have been a crime and really no one would have cared that much. People cared because these priests were raping teens and kids. This therefore by definition cannot be a basically homosexual relationship Nil Einne 16:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Casey statement

removed the following sentence:

Subsequently, Santorum's opponent, Bob Casey returned Dan Savage's check. [1]

If it were preceeded with information about Dan Savage donating money to Casey or the reasons that Casey gave for returning the money I could see it be included. As it was it was out of place and confusing. Charles (Kznf) 19:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, I don't think such a section is warranted. I think the donation of money to Casey and his return of that money is tangental to the word santorum which itself is already tangental to the original remarks made by Santorum Charles (Kznf) 19:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Worthy of an article?

I don't really see how this is deserving of an independent article. It just follows a single episode of a single politician. Dozens of politicians go through dozens of such controversies on a regular basis. Sometimes they result in actual public turmoil or outcry. This episode seems like just another blip on the political radar. I'd think mentioning it in the Santorum profile is sufficient. Zz414 23:31, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

That's great that you are able to think and see for yourself. Do you think you could provide us with a list of these dozens of other similar issues? Santorummm 18:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
For instance, George Allen, Joe Biden, and Howard Dean each have made controversial statements, but none of them have independent articles on them. Each of their statements are classified under subheadings of their pages. Zz414 18:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I see this as more of a sub-article or spin-off than a regular article; that is, it has enough detailed, sourced material that to merge it back into the original article about the politician would probably mean a.) cutting some quite good, well-sourced work out, or b.) allowing the current material to overwhelm/dominate the original due to the amount of space it would take up in comparision to the rest of the sections on the page. This is common practice on Wikipedia - for instance, most popular TV series or comic book series articles (X-Men, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.) have seperate, more in-depth articles on their main characters or episodes (not every series will have an article on every episode, but most series that ran for more than a couple of seasons have at least a list of episodes as a seperate article, and particularly famous, high-rated, critically-acclaimed or otherwise important episodes tend to almost always have their own seperate article). Fan fiction (last I checked) had its terminology and legal issues sections made into seperate articles, because there was a lot of material that was useful in some way or another, but which when it appeared on the main article, made it into a daunting, messy, unstable beast of a page - the legal aspects of it are incredibly key, but there just isn't a way to get full coverage of that aspect without having it as a seperate article. The "terminology" includes names of unique subgenres and whatnot that provide fuller coverage of the subject and the subculture surrounding it, but were described by one user as "confusing" to uninitiated, especially as the main article is really meant to provide a general overview of the subject. Again - this creation of subpages when certain aspects of an article subject grow too be too big to keep in the original while still keeping it clean, readable and NPOV, is common practice on WP. Remember: Wikipedia is not a print encyclopedia, and it's things like that that make it so different from print encyclopedias (and in my opinion, often much more comprehensive and much more able to provide good coverage of a subject). ;) Runa27 04:13, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please stop adding 2006 election stuff to this page.

I removed a rather POV-ful comment about Santorum losing the recent election. Someone else expanded it, gave it its own heading, and turned it into an editorial. The 2006 election is no more relevant to Santorum's 2003 remarks than the rest of his life is, and there's absolutely no reason to just duplicate the Rick Santorum article on this page (they're linked in the very first sentence!). 130.58.235.187 07:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2006 Election Result section

The personal agenda of the left-leaning contributer who composed the final section of this article (2006 Election) is patently obvious to even the most casual reader. As they themself claim, there were "many issues" behind Santorum's ouster, and highlighting (and exaggerating, I might add) Santorum's legislative stance on homosexuality flies in the face of Wikipedia's standards of objectivity. The section should, at the least, be modified to exclude the contributor's personal and biased view.

No matter how NPOV-ish you could make it, that section shouldn't be in an article about some stuff he said in 2003. This is why there is a page called Rick Santorum in the first place. 130.58.235.187 00:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
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