Sigh.

I haven't written much about Rick Santorum over the last couple of years. I devoted a short chapter in my last book, American Savage, to Rick, but I haven't updated www.spreadingsantorum.com even once since he announced that he was running for president again. I'm done with Santorum, I'm sick of Rick, I'm not gonna do him the favor of pretending to take him seriously anymore. (A rare instance where I'm taking my cues from the GOP base.)

Now Rick thinks he can be president—or, at the very least, the GOP nominee—because he was the first runner up in 2012 GOP nomination contest and Republicans typically line up behind the first runner up next time around. Also fueling Rick's presidential delusions: Reagan won the same number of states in his failed attempt to win the GOP nomination in 1976 that Santorum won in his failed attempt to win the 2012 GOP nomination; four years later Reagan came back to win the nomination and the White House. But everything about our politics—left, right, and center—is atypical these days. So, yeah, Rick is not going to be the GOP nominee. Rick Santorum, as I dubbed him in 2011, is very much "yesterday's bigot."

But Rick is running for president, even if he isn't generating much froth in the polls, and Rachel Maddow has invited everyone running for the nomination, Democrat or Republican, to come on her show. Rick sat down with Maddow on MSNBC last night and I woke up to scores of emails and tweets this morning asking me what I thought of the interview.

Okay, here goes...

1. I thought Rachel's introduction—Rick Santorum for Dummies—was better, tougher, more entertaining, and way more informative than the actual interview.

2. In fairness to Rachel: the interview was immediately derailed by Rick's refusal to acknowledge/inability to understand our system of government and Rachel's apparent shock at having to explain our system of government—three co-equal branches, judicial review, etc.—to a former U.S. Senator. (The legislative branch makes the laws, the executive executes the law, the Supreme Court—if the law is challenged—has the final say on the constitutionality of all those laws.) TPM:

Santorum told Maddow that the Supreme Court "is not a superior branch of government" and argued that Congress can still pass a law regarding same-sex marriage. Yet Maddow insisted that Congress could only pass a constitutional amendment that directly contradicts a Supreme Court ruling. Santorum disagreed and said that all three branches of government can determine what is constitutional. "You’re fundamentally wrong on civics," Maddow responded. "If there is a question as to the constitutionality of a law, it gets adjudicated. And the second syllable in that word means it gets decided in the judiciary. The Supreme Court decides whether or not a law is constitutional. So you could not now pass a law that said, ‘We’re banning same-sex marriage.'"

Rick Santorum is a lawyer, he spent four years in U.S. House of Representatives, he spent twelve years in U.S. Senate... and he either doesn't know how our system of government works or he's pretending not to know how it works so he can run around the country making empty promises to the gay haters in the GOP base about how his plan to ban same-sex marriage without amending the constitution. That's unpossible and Rick knows it.

3. Watching Rachel try and fail to make Rick understand that banning gay marriage without amending the constitution is unpossible—because judicial review is actually a thing—reminded me of this Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

4. Most of the rest of the interview is devoted to parsing Rick's 2003 "man on dog" interview with a reporter from the AP. During that interview Rick compared married gay and lesbian couples—or gay and lesbian couples who wished to marry—to dog fuckers and child rapists. Now Rick Santorum has said lots of insane shit over the decades... so why is he still being asked about the insane shit he said during this particular interview 13 years ago? That would be thanks to the collective genius of Savage Love readers.

The first genius was the young gay dude who sent me this letter in May of 2003, just as Rick's "Man On Dog" scandal was dying down...

I’m a 23-year-old gay male who’s been following the Rick Santorum scandal, and I have a proposal. Washington and the press seem content to let Santorum's comments fade into political oblivion, so I say the gay community should welcome this “inclusive” man with open arms. That’s right; if Rick Santorum wants to invite himself into the bedrooms of gays and lesbians (and their dogs), I say we “include” him in our sex lives—by naming a gay sex act after him. Here’s where you come in, Dan. Ask your readers to write in and vote on which gay sex act is worthy of the Rick Santorum moniker. It could be all forms of gay sex (“I pulled a Rick Santorum with my straight roommate in college”), or orgasm in a gay context (“We fooled around, and then I Rick Santorumed all over his face”), or maybe something weirder (“We’ve bought some broom handles, and we’ll be Rick Santoruming all night”). You pick the best suggestions, and we all get to vote! And then, voilà! This episode will never be forgotten!

The second genius was the Savage Love reader who sent in this proposed definition...

While I agree with the spirit of naming something objectionable (to him) after Rick Santorum, I think it should be a substance, not an act. I would never want to "santorum" anyone I liked. What a turnoff. Instead, I think it would be better to name some kind of sexual byproduct after him. After all, ending up with idiots like Santorum in elected office is a byproduct of the otherwise desirable practice of letting any old yokel vote. Specifically, I nominate the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. As in, "We had a great time, but we got santorum all over the sheets."

And the rest of the geniuses would be the Savage Love readers who voted for “frothy mixture” in a landslide. "Frothy mix" beat its nearest runner up (“farting in the face of someone who’s rimming you”) by a three-to-one margin. Then came the new definition's genius—but completely legitimate—rise to the top of Google search results and... et voilà: Rick Santorum is still having to answer for "man on dog."

1305732646-rachelsantorumgoogle.jpg

santorum.JPG

5. Rick says he regrets that interview, that he regrets the dog fucker comparison (and I think we all know why he regrets it), but that he was so totally right. The Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which found that laws against sodomy between consenting adults were unconstitutional (gay and straight sodomy—breeders do sodomy too), opened the door to gay marriage (true enough) and could one day presumably open the doggy door to man-on-dog marriage.

6. But 2015 Rick Santorum is less concerned with man-on-dog/man-on-child marriage than 2003 Rick Santorum. These days Rick worries that legal same-sex marriage is a slippery slope that ends at legal polygamy. But polygamy, which is both traditional (polygamous marriage has been more commonly practiced throughout history than 1M1W marriage) and biblical (Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian, can explain biblical marriage for you), has been an exclusively straight institution. Polygamy historically—and currently, where still practiced—is about one straight man and many, many straight women. (The polygamist who's suing for the legal right to marry both his wives is straight.) So it's straight sex and legal opposite-sex marriage that has placed on a slippery slope that leads to legal polygamy, not gay sex and gay marriage. But no one is proposing that we ban opposite-sex marriage to protect us from polygamy. Weird.

7. I was surprised that Rachel would ask Rick whether he believes homosexuality is a choice or if he believes that homosexuality is an immutable characteristic. The choice question is interesting, sure, but it should always be framed—or qualified—as politically and constitutionally irrelevant; it shouldn't matter whether homosexuality is a choice. Rick said he didn't know the answer to that question but then immediately started talking about all the ex-gays he's known and loved over the years. (Not one of Rick's ex-gay friends would ever allow us to test his ex-gayness by hooking him up to a penile plethysmograph and showing him gay porn.) Rachel should've countered with all the ex-Christians and ex-Jews and ex-Muslims she knows. Faith is a very, very mutable characteristic (proselytizing presumes the mutability of faith) and yet it is illegal—unconstitutional even—to discriminate against people based on what they choose to believe and the religion they choose to adhere to. The obvious follow up question when someone says they oppose rights for LGBT people because sexuality is a choice: "Religious belief is a choice. Do you think it should legal to discriminate against people based on their faith?"

8. Blah blah blah—I open by saying I'm done with Rick and then I go on and on and on. I'm going to stop wasting my beautiful mind on Rick Santorum. But, hey, would you do me a favor? If you've gotten this far... go and Google "santorum" for me and then click on www.spreadingsantorum.com. Thanks!