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I’m not picking on you, I don’t like rapists either…

April 27th, 2003 · No Comments

I’m delighted to see that even Stan Kurtz opposes sodomy laws, but he does seem to have misread Sen. Santorum’s comments. Kurtz writes:

For starters, Sullivan chastises me for ignoring the fact that Santorum equates homosexuality to child abuse and bestiality. But in his interview, Santorum explicitly said that homosexuality is not child abuse and not bestiality.

Presumably, Kurtz is referring to this bit from the interview:

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.

But as Jacob Levy notes, the “it” in the third sentence refers to marriage, not homosexuality. That’s the only way that the following sentence makes sense: “It” (marriage) is one thing, man-on-woman, as opposed to man on child, man, or dog. So actually, the message is the opposite of what Kurtz got from it. Santorum isn’t “pick[ing] on homsexuality” precisely because he’s lumping it together with child abuse and bestiality.

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