During Thursday's edition of The
Glenn Beck Program, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum
denied he's homophobic, but then added that gay sex should be
criminalized.
Earlier in the week, in response to
former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson's claim that the GOP is
homophobic, Beck said he doesn't see it.
In an appearance on MSNBC's Hardball,
Simpson, a Republican who served 18 years in the Senate, said
Santorum “has said some cruel things, cruel, cruel things about
homosexuals.”
“What are you talking about? What
did he say? You know, you can't get away with just this generic, 'He
said some cruel things, some cruel, cruel things, awful, horrible,
heinous, despicable things.' What! What he say? Rick Santorum is
not present for us to ask him,” Beck said.
Santorum
answered those questions for Beck two days later.
“There were no 'cruel, cruel'
remarks,” Santorum told Beck. “All I can ponder is that Alan
Simpson is talking about a comment that I made, which I paraphrased,
almost word for word, but paraphrased a Supreme Court justice in a
case called Lawrence v. Texas, before that case came out,
which had to do with, as you know, a Supreme Court case on the issue
of sodomy, and I said that if you have – if the Supreme Court
changes the legal standard to say that consensual sexual activity is
now a constitutional right, then we open up the gates for all sorts
of consensual activity.”
“Unfortunately, folks like Alan
Simpson saw that as homophobic.”
“It's not homophobic. It's a legal
argument, and it's a correct legal argument. In fact, that's exactly
what's happening. We went from Lawrence v. Texas to now a
constitutional right to same-sex marriage and they're going into a
constitutional right to polyamorous relationships. This is the
slippery slope that we're heading down, and I stand by it.”