Jesus, these Fox News debates. This was my first Fox News debate. There’s so much to try to keep an eye on, so many desperate claims to sift through. Is Lindsey Graham using organ-harvesting fear tactics to pick up chicks? How can George Pataki be pro-choice and also want to cut all funding for Planned Parenthood? How is Carly Fiorina going to capitalize on her newfound role as Queen of the Kids Table?
Lots to consider. But the number one most shocking thing was the logic that Rick Santorum used when he compared the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. Early in the debate, Santorum said, “When we treat everyone equally under the law, that’s when we feel good about being Americans.”
That’s right. What makes Santorum feel good about America is when we treat everyone equally under the law. Later, the moderator asked the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex whether gay marriage is “settled law.” Santorum responded: “It is not any more than Dred Scott was settled law to Abraham Lincoln.”
Okay, so. Santorum is equating his urgency to reverse the gay marriage decision—a decision that ensures that everyone is being treated equally under the law—with Lincoln’s urgency to reverse legal slavery, wherein black people were treated as property (and were therefore unequal under the law). Hmm. Lemme just. Hmmmm. The only way Santorum can square this idea with himself is if he sees the institution of marriage as a system that will lead to the centuries-long enslavement of gay people.
What’s strange is this isn’t a gaffe. As brain-bending as it is, it was probably planned. It’s a version of something he’s said before. It’s something he THOUGHT about a while ago, something he believes he needed to say to the American people, to whom he was being introduced for a second time. This was vetted. Other people heard him say this and said, “Yes, that’s it, that’s sound. Say that. People being able to marry whomever they love is exactly the same as telling a grown African American who’s been freed that he’s not free after all because there’s no such thing as freedom for African Americans.”
Keep listening to them, Rick! Your advisers are awesome! Keep saying that gay people having freedom is the same thing as black people not having freedom and pretty soon we won’t have to hear you say anything again.
