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Saturday, April 26, 2003

By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- After four days of silence regarding Sen. Rick Santorum's remarks aligning homosexuality with polygamy, incest, bigamy and adultery, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer yesterday said President Bush still has confidence in the Pennsylvania lawmaker, who is the Senate's No. 3 GOP leader.

Further, Fleischer offered: "The president believes the senator is an inclusive man. And that's what he believes."

Bush still has not publicly addressed the controversy surrounding Santorum's comments, neither lending personal support to the embattled lawmaker nor disassociating himself from Santorum's remarks. There have been calls in the gay community and among some Democrats for Santorum to step down from his leadership post, while conservative groups continue their steadfast support for him.

Ken Connor, president of the conservative Family Research Council, complained that the White House defense of Santorum was not strong enough.

"The administration has offered only timid support for Sen. Rick Santorum, but little defense of marriage against the ugly attacks of the extremist homosexual lobby and its Democratic allies in Congress," Connor said. "This misguided political strategy will serve only to alienate pro-family voters."

The White House role in internal Republican Party matters is significant, not solely because Bush is the head of the party. When former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi first came under fire Dec. 5 for seeming to suggest that Republicans should have endorsed former South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond's segregationist 1948 bid for the presidency, the White House at first said nothing. A week later, though, on Dec. 12, Bush sharply criticized Lott, saying his remarks didn't reflect the party's beliefs. At the same time, however, he said Lott's fate should remain up to his Senate colleagues.

As the furor continued, Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., presumably with White House encouragement, said he would challenge Lott for the leader's post. Shortly thereafter, on Dec. 20, Lott stepped down.

The Associated Press on Monday published Santorum's interview comments about a Texas case challenging that state's anti-sodomy law, which the Supreme Court is expected to decide this spring.

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery, you have the right to anything," the senator said.

Explaining his remarks since then, Santorum, a devout Roman Catholic and father of six children, said he would not apologize. But the senator, who is a lawyer, maintained that he was talking specifically about the right to privacy, which he believes is not implicit in the Constitution.

"I am a firm believer that all are equal under the Constitution," he added. "My comments should not be misconstrued in any way as a statement on individual lifestyles."

Santorum's statement about privacy ignited more flames. Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, yesterday said that if his views were upheld, "women and men would once again face state bans and restrictions on contraception.

"The criticism of [Santorum's] hateful statements about lesbians and gays is certainly justified," Feldt said. "But where is the outrage over the senator's equally hateful attempt to return us to the days when women did not have access to birth control? It is time for the Republican Party to walk the talk of 'compassionate conservatism.' Senator Santorum's homophobic and sexist remarks warrant his immediate removal from leadership."

No Republican in Congress has called for the leadership ouster of Santorum. But several moderate Republicans have publicly said he should apologize for remarks that the gay community has regarded as offensive. But Fleischer twice yesterday publicly indicated that the White House would not turn its back on Santorum.

Asked if the president disavowed Santorum's remarks, the spokesman said: "The president views it exactly as I've indicated. This is a question of a legal matter before the courts, and different people have different legal theories. The president has confidence in the senator and believes he's doing a good job as senator," then extended that to his leadership job.

Santorum's colleague, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Santorum has become enmeshed in the typical Washington juggernaut, but the senior senator predicted that his colleague would survive the uproar.

Last December, Specter had also defended Lott, saying he was confident that the Mississippi lawmaker was not a segregationist. "His comment was an inadvertent slip, and his apology should end the discussion," Specter said then.

Specter again this week said Lott was driven from his post without cause because he was devoured by the "cannibals" that Specter contends inhabit Washington.

Specter had his own experience of being castigated by special-interest groups when he defended Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee and now its only black justice, against witness Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment during Thomas' Senate confirmation hearings.

Nonetheless, Specter's renewed defense of Lott this week provoked a reaction yesterday from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Specter, it said, "proved yet again today that he has been in politics for too long and is simply out of touch with the people and the times."