SpongeRick SantorumPants

Did you ever wonder whether Rick Santorum (R-Pa) came to his bizarre conclusion that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas would lead to "man on dog" sex all on his own? I can't say that I ever gave that lunatic's ill-informed pronoucements much consideration at all, but Max Blumenthal delivers a small history of the intellectual underpinnings -- if this phrase can be applied to such obtuse homophobic hysteria -- for Santorum's limited terms of reference. In fact, Santorum appears to be merely the current vessel by which a coterie of "right wing Catholic intellectuals" insist their dreadful and baseless theories upon the body of Congress and, indeed, on the larger body politic of American society.

In retrospect, it now appears entirely unlikely that Rick Santorum could muster enough neurons together to actually form even the most incoherent of ideas, let alone develop a vein of theological thought that would allow him to draw conclusions about a Supreme Court decision. Which is where the Rev. John Neuhaus, Robert George and "legal scholar" Hadley Arkes come in to play, three men who have used Santorum to exact their theocon agenda upon the civic laws of the land. Santorum, in turn, has been a willing troll, a sponge of man ready to absorb any and all pronouncements of these Christianist goobers and to further the bidding of his Catholic overlords. He absorbed their odd notions and ran with them to his base, bewailing the evils of gays in the name of all that is holy.

No, Rick Santorum did not arrive at his "man on dog" notions within the vacuum that is his beautiful mind. He was merely a tool. And now that he appears to be on his way out of Congress, the three wise homophobes are in search of the next wrench by which they might exert their twisted torque on personal liberty in America.