His moralistic conflation of 'God's laws' and society's laws make him the modern descendant of Puritans, Prohibitionists, and anti-sodomy crusaders.
A criticism I made of Rick Santorum is generating a bit of dissent. It all started when the former Pennsylvania senator pledged that if elected president he'll speak out against the use of contraceptives. In his opinion, it isn't ever okay to use condoms or birth control pills because he regards procreative sex as the most "special" kind, whereas non-procreative sex is "simply pleasure." That's problematic in his view because sex "is special, and it needs to be seen as special." He concluded his remarks by saying that "most presidents don't talk about those things, and
maybe people don't want us to talk about those things... but these are important public policy issues."
Here's a part of my retort:
Any politician who regards the adult use of contraceptives as a matter under his purview cannot lay claim to the limited government label, nor can he credibly invoke a tradition rooted in the pursuit of happiness.
James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal responds:
In truth, Santorum says only that he would "talk about" what he sees as the social harms of contraception. There is no conflict whatever between limited government and moral exhortation, provided the latter is unaccompanied by legislative or administrative action.
And the quote is very much in keeping with "a tradition rooted in the pursuit of happiness." Santorum is merely making a case for deferred gratification. His claim is that the easy availability of birth control has enabled and encouraged a pursuit of pleasure that is inimical to the achievement of happiness. One may reasonably argue that Santorum is overgeneralizing or that on the whole he is mistaken. But to write him out of the American tradition on the basis of that quote, as Friedersdorf attempts to do, is simply bonkers.
This misunderstands both Santorum's position and mine.
As my excerpt and Santorum's full quote make clear, he asserts that the alleged superiority of procreative sex and the need to keep sexual intercourse "special" are "important public policy issues." To label something a "public policy issue" implies that it is an appropriate subject for policy-making by state or federal legislators (one would hope) or executive branch bureaucrats.*