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Santorum family values

Via Andrew Sullivan, this Rick Santorum quote: “I’d love him just as much as I did the second before he told me,” – Rick Santorum, on how he would react if one if his sons came out as gay. I completely believe him. I would say the same thing, and mean it with all my heart. […]

Via Andrew Sullivan, this Rick Santorum quote:

“I’d love him just as much as I did the second before he told me,” – Rick Santorum, on how he would react if one if his sons came out as gay.

I completely believe him. I would say the same thing, and mean it with all my heart. Not every father or mother could, or would, and not every gay son or daughter could, or would, accept that. But nothing could separate my children from my love. I tell them that all the time, because I want them to know it’s true.

The abstractions of the culture wars break down in actual families and in actual communities. I found out that in my small, very conservative and churchgoing Southern town, there’s a lot of affection for Ginger Snap, a local black drag queen. Ginger Snap has her own float in the community Christmas parade. I guarantee that if you polled the people along the parade route, both white and black, nine out of 10 would say that homosexuality is wrong and that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed. But they will also watch Ginger Snap roll by on her float and wave. Ginger Snap is Matthew, the kindly young maitre’d at a restaurant in town. He’s always polite, and kind to people’s children when they come in. The idea that holding a critical moral position on homosexuality obliges one to hate this young gay man would strike most people around here as strange. If you are the sort of person who demands that everyone around you adopt your own point of view before you will establish some sort of relationship with them, you will be unhappy and isolated, until and unless you can move to a city big enough to establish yourself in your own ghetto.

People are complicated. If you want logic to dictate social life, stay out of the South, and especially stay out of southern Louisiana. Our town really is a “love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart” kind of place, or so it seems to me. Anyway, there is no reason to think Santorum’s statement is hypocritical in the least. Verily, as Pascal said, the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.

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