Dan Savage, on the paradox of Rick Santorum's claim that he's all for tiny government, except when it comes to controlling the reproductive choices of others:
Santorum's for a smaller federal government... because the smaller the federal government, the more of it Santorum can stuff in your vagina . . . .
Savage is commenting on remarks Santorum made recently in an interview with Shane Vander Hart, editor of CaffeineatedThoughts.com. In the interview, Santorum sounded an alarm about "the dangers of contraception in this country," and equated the use of contraceptives with sexual libertinism. (It may come as quite a surprise to the 90%+ Catholic couples in the U.S. who use contraceptives that they have joined the underworld of sexual libertinism.) Santorum said that though some Christians approve of contraception, "it's not okay," because contraceptive use is "a license to do things in the sexual realm that is [sic] counter to how things are supposed to be.
Counter, that is, to how Santorum and the Catholic magisterium imagine things are supposed to be done in the sexual realm: Santorum concluded his discourse on the dangers of contraception with a reminder that sex is for procreation: "That's the perfect way a sexual union should happen."
As I noted recently, some of the "faith-based" Catholic Democrats who keep trying to force the Democratic party to toe the line of the U.S. Catholic bishops (Michael Sean Winters at National Catholic Reporter is one of their leaders) want to maintain that the bishops are not interested in limiting access to contraceptives, as they attack the new guidelines recommended by the Department of Health and Human Services that would require insurance plans to include provisions for contraceptive coverage.
Santorum's comments indicate otherwise, however--and I suspect that Rick Santorum has the confidence and ear of the U.S. Catholic bishops far more than Dan Savage or I do. Or, for that matter, far more than do the 90%+ of U.S. Catholic married couples who use contraceptives.
Santorum gives the game away pretty clearly, as did the U.S. Catholic bishops' spokeswoman Sr. Mary Ann Walsh from the moment the new HHS guidelines were placed on the table for discussion: the Vatican and the U.S. bishops would like nothing more than to turn the clock back to a time in which access to contraception was limited or non-existent. And in which the use of contraceptives was regarded by a majority of the public as morally dubious.
I doubt seriously that the Catholic magisterium will succeed in that goal. I also doubt seriously that where Mr. Santorum stands on these issues represents anywhere near the real moral center of the rich, complex, nuanced and intelligent tradition of Catholic moral thinking, at its best.
But try telling the current leaders of the Catholic church that. Or, for that matter, try telling faith-based Catholic Democrats like Michael Sean Winters this, as they continue to claim to be spokespersons and power-brokers for all the rest of "us Catholics" (a phrase Winters loves to use) in beltway power circles--even though fully two-thirds of American Catholics in the latest Catholics in America survey, whose results have just been published in National Catholic Reporter, say that the informed conscience of the individual should be the final judge of the morality of contraceptive use.
That's more than six times the number of "us Catholics" who reported to the authors of this survey that the magisterium should have the final word about these matters . . . .
Santorum gives the game away pretty clearly, as did the U.S. Catholic bishops' spokeswoman Sr. Mary Ann Walsh from the moment the new HHS guidelines were placed on the table for discussion: the Vatican and the U.S. bishops would like nothing more than to turn the clock back to a time in which access to contraception was limited or non-existent. And in which the use of contraceptives was regarded by a majority of the public as morally dubious.
I doubt seriously that the Catholic magisterium will succeed in that goal. I also doubt seriously that where Mr. Santorum stands on these issues represents anywhere near the real moral center of the rich, complex, nuanced and intelligent tradition of Catholic moral thinking, at its best.
But try telling the current leaders of the Catholic church that. Or, for that matter, try telling faith-based Catholic Democrats like Michael Sean Winters this, as they continue to claim to be spokespersons and power-brokers for all the rest of "us Catholics" (a phrase Winters loves to use) in beltway power circles--even though fully two-thirds of American Catholics in the latest Catholics in America survey, whose results have just been published in National Catholic Reporter, say that the informed conscience of the individual should be the final judge of the morality of contraceptive use.
That's more than six times the number of "us Catholics" who reported to the authors of this survey that the magisterium should have the final word about these matters . . . .
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