Constitutional Law, Politics, Society

Rick Santorum: Will Anti-Romney Voters Embrace Anti-Privacy Values?

The close second place victory of Rick Santorum in Iowa has elevated the latest choice of Republican for the anti-Romney candidate. Civil libertarians, of course, are well acquainted with Santorum who lost his Pennsylvania seat due to his extremist views. Santorum has outdone his opponents in appealing to evangelical voters by not just virtually promising to go to war upon being elected but is opposed to the Griswold decision.


Santorum believes that the states have a right to criminalize private conduct considered immoral, including the right to use contraceptives. He allows a strong view of states rights to negate the protections of the bill of rights — allowing the 10th Amendment to wipe out the first eight amendment that precede it.

Santorum insists that “[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 is the thing I have said about the activism of the supreme court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide. You shouldn’t create constitutional rights when states do dumb things. . . Let the people decide if the states are doing dumb things get rid of the legislature and replace them as opposed to creating constitutional laws that have consequences that were before them.” But, of course, that is a virtual invitation to majoritarian terror. What is the majority likes such “dumb things” as prejudice against those with alternative lifestyles or moral viewpoints.

Santorum’s greatest threat to civil liberties is found in the area of privacy. He is an advocate of morality codes and laws that cannot be enforced without shredding principles of privacy. Santorum believes that political power means the right to impose a moral agenda: “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…. 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.”

It is the very view rejected in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), where the Court struck down a law criminalizing the sale of contraceptives to married couples. In Griswold, Justice William O. Douglas wrote:

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights – older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.

He appears to embrace the view of Potter Stewart that a law (as Stewart) can be “uncommonly silly” but still constitutional. However, that law denied the right of couples to control their own conception. It is a bit more than “silly” for most civil libertarians and libertarians.

Santorum’s views present a clear and present danger to privacy in this country. While he has not raised the image of federal judges being frog marched to Capitol Hill, his legal vision appears frozen in the amber of 1950s jurisprudence, if not the 1850s.

75 thoughts on “Rick Santorum: Will Anti-Romney Voters Embrace Anti-Privacy Values?”

  3. While keeping an occasional eye on the caucus last night one exchange caught my ear: someone on stage (MSNBC) mentioned Bachman and that it was odd that she wasn’t doing better, another commentator said that she appeals to the fundis but the pastors won’t endorse her because she’s a woman. He said that at one time she was the most radical of the bunch so she appealed to them but now ‘they’ have Santorum and Perry- they don’t need her anymore, she’ll be asked to drop out soon.

    That sounded plausible to me knowing the fundi mind-set. The one person that has been their standard bearer all along and even preaches the ‘submissive wife’ mantra is the person they won’t endorse because of her sex. The irony is matched by only the horror of how well Santorum did.

    Does anybody remember the scene in Blade Runner when Pris is killed? She (an android) gets shot and goes into a mechanical (and grotesque, shocking) fit. That’s what the republican field and the aspirations of the Republican base is like to me this year, I can’t shake that image when I think about them.

    This is really an epic political battle of ideas. It is truly a battle between the future and the past. This year the Republican party has morphed into (been revealed as?) a dangerous, inhumane creature flailing mindlessly. Every pre-intellectual, hate-filled, vicious impulse unleashed and displayed. The republicans have catered to and cultivated the base for 30 years and now it’s ascendant in the states and it’s destroying the party from within. I just hope it can be killed off before it gets (any more) control of the country.

  4. “This kind of argument always turns out to mean ‘the states have the right to make laws prohibiting anything I consider immoral’.”

    Pat H.,

    Thank you for concisely stating the problem with the “States Rights” formulation. The thing is too that those who proclaim it know damn well that they’re talking about re-instituting “Jim Crow” and religious tyranny. The hypocrisy of it angers me.

  5. Curious,

    SwM and I were both making snarky comments on those who think Obama the incarnation of evil, which he is’t despite his disappointing performance.

  6. what a choice this will be, the devil in your living room or lucifer in your bedroom.

  7. @Swarthmore Mom,

    Say it ain’t so! Santorum promises to bomb Iran – would allow states to legislate what goes on in our bedrooms – enthusiastically supports Israel policies, trade war with China – would keep troops in Iraq. Is he better than Obama? . (I’m praying for a recess appointment for Consumer Protection)

  8. “Mike S., There is no one worse than “O”.”

    SwM,

    The Devil Incarnate. Ron Paul will make everything better, Rick can’t win and Mitt can do no worse as President. Won’t we all be so much better off when we get that devil our of the White House and if we’re don’t feel better, who cares? We will have kept our purity.

  9. “Sounds like sex with Santorum would be boooring or non-existent.” (bettykath)

    lol … booooring … and I never vote for anyone who promotes boring sex.

  10. This kind of argument always turns out to mean ‘the states have the right to make laws prohibiting anything I consider immoral’. If someone really meant that the constitution does not apply to the states, then my home state of South Carolina could re-institute chattel slavery. Should any state have majority Muslim population, they could institute Sharia law. Of course, this is not what Santorum means, since he does support federal overrides when a state makes something he personally considers immoral legal.

  15. :That is the thing I have said about the activism of the supreme court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide.”

    “It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

    The Supreme Court should not decide b/c Santorum already has? The people should decide but Santorum has already decided for them? Sounds like sex with Santorum would be boooring or non-existent.

  16. I don’t think they’re hiding anything, really, rafflaw. It’s an age old question of men taking power through religion and religious ideals. Mankind (literally man, here) wrote most religious texts in the image than man is superior to woman and we should control them.

    I wouldn’t call that hiding anything. It’s pretty obvious.

    (though I imagine you could be hinting at something else…)

  17. My guess at this point is that Romney will be the anointed candidate since he has now been endorsed by GHW Bush. However, in the insane world of
    Republican politics, who knows and Santorum could be the choice. My question for those who find Obama so distasteful is whether they deem Obama and Santorum equally as bad, or if sometimes hard choices must be made?

  18. rafflaw, You’re right. Santorum grabbed 18 or 19 percent of the evangelical vote in Iowa, I believe… Paul got the lion’s share… It was his final push, with the “one nation under God” line that helped him surge in the end, IMO.

  19. Rick Santorum’s Top 10 Most Outrageous Campaign Statements
    http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/01/04/397355/rick-santorums-top-10-most-outrageous-campaign-statements/

    Excerpt:
    1) ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right 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.”

    3) CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

    4) GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”

    5) OBAMA SHOULD OPPOSE ABORTION BECAUSE HE’S BLACK: During an appearance on Christian television in January, Santorum said he was surprised that President Obama didn’t know when life began — given his skin color. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,” he explained.

    6) WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.

    7) ABORTION EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S HEALTH ARE ‘PHONY’: While discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban in June, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony.” “They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective,” he said.

  20. Santorum can only be successful in a place like Iowa where the religious right is very strong. It is funny how the Republicans can be all in favor of personal rights except where it comes to women and sex. Could they be hiding something?

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