First diary here, so go easy.
O.K., I admit, Rick Santorum, owner of the humiliating large defeat in Pennsylvania Senate election of 2006, didn't blame snowfall in Norway on gay marriage. But he might as well have. Channeling his best Kevin James of Chris Mathews fame, and without giving one bit of evidence to support his "conclusions", in an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer Santorum blamed high out of wedlock first pregnancies and low heterosexual marriage rates in Norway on the legalization of gay marriage.
In Thursday's Inquirer, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum gave everyone a reminder of why he was loathed by so many. A guy who rose to prominence on the back of right wing extremist views and a shockingly uninformed mind, he is at his best fanning the flames of bigotry and prejudice among the less enlightened of us. His 2006 drubbing has done nothing to change his views. His editorial entitled "A Wake Up Call on Gay Marriage After '03 Alarm Went Unheeded" is a testimony to what a mindless dolt Santorum is and again displays his scratch the surface understanding of any issue he addresses. In an attempt to complain about the California Supreme Court's decision to allow same-sex couples to marry, Santorum hangs out his ignorance in full bloom for all to see. The money quote...
Look at Norway. It began allowing same-sex marriage in the 1990s. In just the last decade, its heterosexual-marriage rates have nose-dived and its out-of-wedlock birthrate skyrocketed to 80 percent for firstborn children. Too bad for those kids who probably won't have a dad around, but we can't let the welfare of children stand in the way of social affirmation can we?
Hey, those are some pretty daunting statistics there, right? Except, if you stop and think about it for a second, you'd probably ask yourself "What does gay marriage have to do with heterosexual marriage rates and out of wedlock birth rates"? I mean, is gay marriage so profound that it is affecting heterosexual marriage plans? Have heterosexuals become so dispondent at the thought of gay marriage that they just can't muster the will to marry themselves? Is gay marriage causing heterosexuals to have more out of wedlock sex? When boy meets girl, are they engaging in sex just as a response to gay marriage? Certainly, Senator Rick will have volumes of evidence to support his accusation that gay marriage is the sole cause of rising out of wedlock birthrates and plummeting hetero marriage rates, right?
Wrong.
Santorum's whole argument about the situation in Norway is found in that quote. He doesn't give one piece of evidence to support his huge jump that gay marriage = lower hetero marriages = higher out of wedlock birthrates. It is because he said it is. The more absurd the better. Thus, using Santorum's limited analysis, you could make the case that snowfall rates in Norway have a direct correlation to gay marriage. Certainly, Christian conservatives have in the past blamed the weather on gays. We've all heard Hagee say that God tried to kill everyone in a three state area by sending Katrina to stop a gay parade. And what of that great right wing belief of "responsiblity"? Are heterosexuals responsible at all for their own birth and marriage rates? Not according to Santorum. It's all the gay's fault. If pressed to support his conclusions I'm sure that Santorum would sound exactly like that great conservative thinker Kevin James, whose understanding of Hitler and Neville Chamberlain went no further than "It's all about appeasement" and "He legitimized and energized Hitler". The bumper sticker mentality of the right wing continues to shock and infuriate me. The fanning of prejudicial flames by way of ignorant rants are sins of which they can never be forgiven.