Rick Santorum: Mr. Biblical for President

Last month I pointed out in morbid detail all the evidence indicating that Rick Santorum is the physical embodiment of the term “religious bigot.”  This man, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not, revealed his true character once again last week when he explained to an ultra religious socially conservative audience that President Barack Obama leads this nation based on a theology different from that in the Bible.

“You may want to call it a theology; you may want to call it secular values. Whatever you want to call it… it is a different set of moral values that they are imposing on people who have a constitutional right to have their own values within the church,” he declared to thunderous applause.

Obama is not motivated by "your quality of life,” Santorum continued. Obama has reached a “low in this country’s history of oppressing religious freedom that we have never seen before.”“In the Christian church there are a lot of different stripes of Christianity… I’m just saying he’s imposing his values on the church and I think that’s wrong,” he said.

Liberals on “the left” have been imposing their own moral code on Americans for quite some time, he added. “You can call it a theology, you can call it a moral code, you can call it a world view,” “They want to impose [that] on everybody else while they insist and complain that somehow or another people of Judeo Christian faith are intolerant of their new moral code.”

To me his message is crystal clear: If elected President of the United States, Rick Santorum would lead this nation on the theology of the Holy Bible. Rick Santorum is an unabashed Christian theocrat. He’s Mr. Biblical. As president, he’ll impose his own religious values on us.

After his remarks raised media eyebrows, however, he tried to backpedal:  "I wasn't suggesting the president's not a Christian. I accept the fact that the president is a Christian," he said. "I was talking about the radical environmentalist; I was talking about energy, this idea that man is here to serve the Earth as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth. And I think that is a phony ideal.”

Right; it wasn’t about religion. It was really about energy. It just came out wrong. "I mean, this is just all an attempt to, you know, to centralize power and to give more power to the government," Santorum said. Sure, Barrack Obama is a Christian – just not the right kind of Christian according the Mr. Biblical. He’s not Biblical enough.

Then he tried to do a complete flip-flop on his position against birth control: He claims he’s been misconstrued by the difference between his public policy position, and his personal beliefs which are guided by his Catholic faith. "I support Title X, I guess it is, and have voted for contraception and although I don't think it works, I think it's harmful to women, I think it's harmful to our society," he said in an interview with Fox News.

But his campaign website says he wants to "repeal Clinton-era Title X family planning regulations, and will direct HHS to restore the separation of Title X family planning from abortion practices and restore a ban on referrals for abortion."

He voted for contraception but thinks it’s harmful for women and society and wants to repeal it. He believes that abstinence education is the better alternative to birth control. So what exactly is his position again? 

Last March, Rick Santorum insisted that America should go to war over “moral” values. The fact is that Rick Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.”

“Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” he preached recently. I think it’s harmful to our society to have a society that says that sex outside of marriage is something that should be encouraged or tolerated, particularly among the young.

Asked once if he would allow the police to search marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives, he replied: “[t]he state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right; the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have.”

That’s because Rick Santorum actually believes in his heart that there is no human right to privacy in the United States of America. "[The] right to privacy…doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution," he once declared.

There is no fundamental right to privacy and absolutely no right to gay marriage either according to Mr. Biblical. “[When] I say things like marriage should be between one man and one woman, I’m called a bigot,” he readily admits. He signed a solemn pledge and voted “yes” on a proposed federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In fact, he wouldn’t offer any legal protections at all to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president.

Mr. Biblical believes that religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right in the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.” Santorum once declared.

“Marriage is not about affirming somebody’s love for somebody else. It’s about uniting together to be open to children, to further civilization in our society.” “[Gay marriage] threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages. It threatens the traditional values of this country.”

So marriage has nothing to do with love in the mind of Mr. Biblical. And he is disgusted by gay people. “Gay people should stop being gay… This is common sense. This is nature, and what we’re trying to do is defy nature because a certain group of people want to be affirmed by society.”

“Life begins at conception, no exceptions for incest, rape, or the life of the mother, and doctors performing abortions should be criminally charged,” proclaims Mr. Biblical on the subject of abortion.

“The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions; I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire,” opines Mr. Biblical on the issue of whether the fundamental right to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, includes an individual’s right to pursue his or her own wants and desires.

Mr. Biblical also rejects the concept of cultural diversity for America: “The elementary error of relativism becomes clear when we look at multiculturalism. Sometime in the 1980s, universities began to champion the importance of “diversity” as a central educational value… The goal of diversity is wrong.”

Mr. Biblical approves of torture: “[John McCain] doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information.”

Mr. Biblical approves of murder: “The U.S. should assassinate certain nuclear scientists from countries like Russia, North Korea and Iran.”

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” says Mr. Biblical.   

Mr. Biblical says of Democrats in America: “The American Left hates Christendom. They hate Western civilization.”

“Poor children should have to suffer hunger and other ills to prevent them from developing the sense of entitlement that comes from relying on government social programs... suffering, if you’re a Christian, suffering is part of life… Isn’t that what Jesus meant by suffer the little children?’” asks Mr. Biblical.

Mr. Biblical wants a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration; a loosening of restrictions on cell phone wiretapping; increased penalties for drug offenses; and reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act.

The government shouldn't require health care providers to cover prenatal tests like amniocentesis, which can determine the possibility of Down syndrome or other fetal problems, said Mr. Biblical last Sunday – not because it’s big brother government – but because amniocentesis "more often than not" results in abortion.

But then Mr. Biblical admitted that such prenatal testing revealed his own three year-old daughter’s chromosome disorder that often results in stillbirths or early childhood death. Such testing is good enough for him and his family but should not be part of every health care policy.

He and his wife decided against an abortion, which was their right, but other families would probably decide differently, and Mr. Biblical doesn’t like that idea. He laments the fact that in such cases "we know that 90% of Down syndrome children are aborted."

And he insisted that it’s President Obama, not him, whose intent on starting a cultural war. His ultra-right-wing socially conservative and religiously oriented audience loved it and roared with applause.

As president, he will call upon the country to build a foundation that will "defend the church, defend the family, defend the nonprofit community, defend them from a government that wants to weaken them," promised Mr. Biblical.

It doesn’t get any clearer than that.