Why Rick Santorum Can't Win: He's Catholic

Look, I'm sure Rick Santorum, within the sanctuary of his friends and family, is a perfectly lovely guy. In fact, I have nothing against him as a person. It's just that, you know, he's unelectable. I mean, after all, he's Catholic!

I know he probably thinks he was born that way, and there's nothing he can do to change it. Heck, maybe he doesn't even want to change that. But the truth is, being Catholic is a choice, it's a lifestyle. And one rejected by the majority of other God-fearing Americans. Maybe he can be re-educated. After all, has he ever really tried being not Catholic?

After all, I wouldn't want Santorum to face the kind of prejudice that is so rife in this world if you are an aggrieved, long-abused minority, still fighting for equal rights and treatment. It just wouldn't be fair to him.

To prove this point I have culled a long list of horrible, bigoted, anti-Catholic remarks from the Internet. These are actual things people have said in public denouncing Catholicism. I guess we could call these folks Papal-phobes.

I fear the day Santorum should be confronted in public by people spewing hateful statements like these:

1. “Is anyone saying Catholic couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?”

2. On Catholic adoption: “A Catholic woman came up to me and said, ‘why are you denying me my right?’ I said, ‘well, because it’s not a right.’ It’s a privilege that society recognizes because society sees intrinsic value to that relationship over any other relationship.”

3. “I certainly would not approve of [a bill moving through the California legislature compels the state to add Catholic history to the state education curriculum], but there’s a logical consequence to the courts injecting themselves in creating rights and people attaching their legislative ideas to those rights that in some respects could logically flow from that. So I’m not surprised.”

4. “I have no problem with Catholicism. I have a problem with Catholic acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional Christian relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just Catholic. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s Catholic. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.”


6. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [Catholic] 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… In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included Catholics. That’s not to pick on Catholicism. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.”

7. Discussing Catholic marriage: “This is an issue just like 9-11… We didn’t decide we wanted to fight the war on terrorism because we wanted to. It was brought to us. And if not now, when?"

8. “[Catholic marriage] threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages. It threatens the traditional values of this country.”

9. “I would argue that the Catholic community has not made the argument. They may have made the argument as to why they want it, but they have not made any arguments as to why this is beneficial for society. They have not made any argument – convincing or otherwise, that I’m aware of – as to what the impact would be on normal, Christian marriages and what the impact would be on children …We’re into, in many respects, an unknown territory.”

10. “Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture, ... When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural Catholicism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

11. "Would the potential attraction to Catholicism by simply having a Catholic in the White House threaten traditional Christianity by leading more Americans to a church that some Christians believe misleadingly calls itself Christian, is an active missionary church, and a dangerous cult?"

12. "I don't want to make Catholic people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."

Of course the truth is Santorum made all these statements above, only I switched the word "gay" for "Catholic."

It's amazing a guy who is from a minority that was discriminated against so heavily for so long could be so dismissive of equal rights for other minorities. After all, it just a little over 50 years ago that people thought John F. Kennedy wasn't fit to be president because he would be a vassal of the Pope in Rome.

And even today in some of the more isolated, evangelical, parts of this nation they still think that Catholics aren't actually Christians.

Note: Not all the statements above were originally about gays. Number 10 was a slam on secular Boston, where I replaced the word "liberalism" with "Catholicism." Which fit pretty well.

Number 11, was a slam on Mormons, and specifically his opponent Mitt Romney. Sounds a lot like the things people used to say about JFK, right?

And number 12, of course, was originally a blast against black people, and "welfare." Or whatever Santorum imagines welfare to be.

In other news, happy Martin Luther King day Rick!

Thoughts On Arizona, Where I Once Lived

I have some sort of mild chest cold. Spring colds suck donkeys.

********************************************************************************

Everyone is still asleep right now, and it looks like it should be a nice day here. I am happy about that. It always improves my moods to see the sun when I wake up. That was one of my favorite things about living in Arizona back from 1990-1992 when I went to Arizona State University. Summer was terrible, as was most of September into, but our winter here was mild and wonderful there. I miss it sometimes.

*******************************************************************************

Dr. Harvey Karp responded to my post on the Huffington Post. I asked him if I could reprint his note. I do believe only the best things about him, but I have to say, we tried and tried to use his method with Stella, and didn't really get the results we hoped for. Your mileage may vary!

****************************************************************************

Speaking of Arizona I see it is in the news again. It seems the only time that state makes national headlines is when something extremely controversial happens. When I was there the big whoop was that they voted against Martin Luther King day.

There was an uproar, as you can imagine, or maybe even remember. Public Enemy countered with their song "By The Time I Get To Arizona." (Here are the lyrics.)

The video, I've been told, includes a plot to blow up the Arizona state capital. Because that's what Dr. King would have wanted? Anyway, my favorite response to the whole mess was from some comedian, whose name I can't remember: You have to be pretty racist to not want a day off.

And here we go again. I am not informed enough about the subject of illegal immigration to feel qualified to speak about what should be done. Stopping random darker skinned people, as a policy, seems unenforceable. It also makes me uncomfortable, on a personal level.

But I also know that the citizens of Arizona must be feeling completely at the end of their collective ropes to vote in such a draconian measure. Otherwise it never would have passed. Anyone from Arizona, can you fill me in, give me a sense of what it feels like on the ground over there?

The irony is I found Arizona State University a beautifully diverse place during my two years there. Certainly far more diverse than Wesleyan University, where I graduated. Wesleyan is famously liberal, so there were people who represented various groups, but I found the place had a lot of self-segregation, to be honest.

ASU was a different story. It is a major, major state school, with over 45,000 students. That's like 15 Wesleyans. My freshman year dorm was 15 stories high and housed 900 kids.

Within that population I met a lot of people who opened my eyes. I saw part time students who lived at home, single mothers finally getting their degrees, and a surprising amount of students from the various Native American reservations within the state. My favorite professor, Michael Mitchell, was an African-American, and had previously taught at Princeton. Through him I met more African-American students, including one who became student body president. This is an accomplishment in a school that was mostly white.

And, yes, there were lots, and lots of students who were either first generation or second generation from Mexico. This was normal, and part of the fabric of the school. I never heard anyone talk about it during my time there.

It's complicated. My memory of ASU and Arizona was of a place that had more than its fair share of white meatheads and snowbirds (the term for retirees who head down for the winter) but also a lot of true diversity. I learned an awful lot in my time there about other cultures and ways of living. I had an English teacher, Jean Erchel, (I have to spell check her name) who spent a great amount of time telling us about Native American cultures. It blew my mind.

I also took amazing classes on Jewish history, and experimental theater. ASU, to me, was a great, open, crazy, hectic place, with a wide variety of students, from literally every kind of background. Its diversity made it a thrilling place to be.

I took an art history class at night which was filled with students who worked all day, and many were much older. This was a new experience for me.

Of course I fell in with a great crew of freaks, many of whom came from backgrounds kind of like mine, but I still saw a student body that was, when you looked, many times more varied than what you could find at any small liberal arts school.

So, it's complicated. I feel unqualified to speak on the issue, as I haven't been to Arizona for years. Every time I've seen a check list for why illegal immigration is bad, I've seen another list for why immigrants of all kinds, even illegal immigrants, actually help the economic growth of an area.

People say they take away jobs. Others say they do the jobs no one else will do. And so on, and so on.

I would love to see what you think, in reader-land, on this contentious subject.

Have a happy Tuesday.