GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said last weekend he is the victim of a holy war by supporters of LGBT rights. Calling it a “jihad,” Santorum said he has been unfairly criticized over his statements comparing gays and lesbians to pedophiles and people who commit incest. The National Organization for Marriage also picked up on the holy-war language, claiming that a Florida school teacher has become a victim of the “jihad.”
At a campaign stop in South Carolina over the weekend, Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, said the LGBT community has declared a jihad against him.
“So the gay community said, ‘He’s comparing gay sex to incest and polygamy, how dare he do this,’ and they have gone out on a, I would argue, jihad against Rick Santorum since then,” he said.
Santorum was referring to a statement he made in 2003 regarding a Supreme Court case that overturned sodomy laws, laws used historically to harass and imprison gays and lesbians.
At the time. he told the Associated Press, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual 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, whether it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.”
On Wednesday, Santorum appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan to discuss LGBT rights. Morgan asked him about what Santorum would do if one of his children was gay.
“I know a lot of gay people and I know a lot of the folks who I talk to who have gone through this go through a lot of very difficult times in their lives after making that decision and struggle with it even after admitting it,” he said.
Morgan also asked if Santorum thought his views could be called bigotry.
“Trying to redefine something that is seen as wrong -– from the standpoint of a church –- and saying a church is bigoted because it holds that opinion that is Biblically-based, I think that is, in itself, an act of bigotry,” Santorum said.
Santorum took that exchange to the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, where he said, “I had Piers Morgan call me a bigot, because I believe what the Catholic Church teaches with respect to homosexuality. So now I’m a bigot because I believe what the Bible teaches.”
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) also used holy-war language to describe the controversy over Florida school teacher Jerry Buell, who was suspended from his position after posting anti-gay comments to his Facebook page.
In July, Buell wrote, “I’m watching the news, eating dinner when the story about New York okaying same-sex unions came on and I almost threw up. And now they showed two guys kissing after their announcement. If they want to call it a union, go ahead. But don’t insult a man and woman’s marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool of whatever. God will not be mocked. When did this sin become acceptable?”
And in another Facebook post: “By the way, if one doesn’t like the most recently posted opinion based on biblical principles and God’s laws, then go ahead and unfriend me. I’ll miss you like I miss my kidney stone from 1994. And I will never accept it because God will never accept it. Romans chapter one.”
Buell’s suspension was lifted this week shortly after the school investigated him to see if his statements violated school policy. He returned to the classroom Thursday.
NOM accused supporters of LGBT rights with issuing a fatwa, popularly mischaracterized as the issuing of a death threat, but is actually a religious opinion over Islamic law.
“The fatwa against Jerry Buell—a Florida schoolteacher who was suspended by a public school for posting on his Facebook page that he was repulsed by gay marriage in New York—has just failed!” wrote NOM’s Brian Brown. “Kudos to Liberty Counsel for defending Jerry in the extraordinary world gay-marriage advocates have sought to create: a world where children do not need a mom and dad, but instead need to be protected from adults who believe and speak for the great truths of Genesis. Jerry won a battle, but the jihad continues.”
Brown continued that they will not be made second-class citizens for opposing equal rights for same-sex couples.
“They win by making us afraid to speak and to act for marriage in the public square,” he said. “They can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope. They do not know us. They do not know the One whom we know.”
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