As a current law student, it is unfortunate to think that Santorum has a legitimate legal degree. His argumentation is both poor and factually incorrect. I will briefly respond to his contentions:
(1) The bridge-building analogy is erroneous. While I’m heartened to see that Santorum suddenly has such deference for the lawmaking function of legislatures, he is actually incorrect. Whenever Congress, for example, passes a law which in some way restricts behavior or conduct, a constitutional challenge to the law makes it incumbent upon GOVERNMENT, not those who oppose the law, to affirmatively demonstrate the state’s basis for the law. In a constitutional democracy we are inherently skeptical of laws that seek to restrict personal liberty. Santorum also ignores the equal protection problems with prohibitions against gay marriage.
(2) The bigamy argument is a tired conservative trope. Taken ad absurdo, we could use Santorum’s argument to just not have any government involvement in marriage at all. “Once a man and a woman can marry each other, who knows what might happen! A man might then go ahead and try to marry multiple women!” And, actually, that does happen, and bigamy is a crime in all 50 states. But bigamy is illegal for good reasons: it has historically been used by men to the detriment and economic disempowerment of women. It has also been used for the purposes of tax fraud. Gay and lesbian Americans do not seek the right to marry multiple people, and it is unclear how the bigamy inquiry is at all relevant to the marriage debate.
(3) I would agree with Mr. Santorum that children deserve two loving, stable parents and strong households. That is a policy goal that the state can pursue by implementing many of the economic measures that Mr. Santorum opposes: stronger unemployment compensation for struggling families, universal health care, and so on. But that is beside the point. Mr. Santorum and those who espouse his views, tellingly, never actually show HOW a prohibition on gay marriage at all furthers his goal of increasing the number of straight marriages. I suspect Mr. Santorum believes that gay men and lesbians are just making some sort of a voluntary, conscious lifestyle “choice,” and that only were there no gay marriage there’d be a floodgate of gay men and lesbians just itching to get married to members of the opposite gender. I have news for you, Mr. Santorum: if that is what you think, you will be sorely disappointed. This is about how people are hard-wired, and in the 21st century I’d like to think politicians wouldn’t presume to know better than the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, those groups’ European and Canadian counterparts, etc. The former senator says he wants a reason-based debate? Give me your reasons, senator! I’m still waiting to hear a sound legal argument against gay marriage.
Rainbow Gefilte Fish 
Leave a comment