Except if he went to Catholic school*, which I’m assuming he did, then he should know better. And considering that he paints himself as such a strict Catholic, he definitely should know better.
*I learned about evolution when I was in Catholic school – or at least, the bare bones of it.
The only time I EVER heard of him doing some good was when he worked to ban backyard breeding and work for tougher animal abuse laws. That’s it.
Y’know, my maternal grandparents were devout lifelong Catholics, and had eleven children, and I never heard either of them, even, speak out against contraception in general. I mean, obviously they weren’t too fond of using it themselves, but they never gave any indication that they thought others shouldn’t.
And while it’s true that an explicit statement in favor of contraception could have generated bad press for Santorum, given his supposedly-Catholic posturing, there’s nothing that says he had to be explicit about it at all. Most politicians, it never even comes up at all, and even if it did, the topic could be easily deflected. A statement like “Well, obviously the best option is abstinence until marriage” wouldn’t really have drawn any serious fire from anyone.
TPaw. He bowed out graciously early - even throwing his hat behind Mitt. He was “supposed to be” McCain’s running mate, but Palin was more exciting (and frankly, who isn’t). He’s got conservative cred. He hasn’t embarrassed himself like Perry or let murderers out of prison who then murder like Huck (you can’t let them throw the very same stones back at you that were thrown at Dukakis).
This is not minutia. The Catholic church holds that there is science and there is religion and that they address very different aspects of reality. This is not a trivial distinction, as evidenced by the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Catholics have no difficulty with believing that God saying “Let there be light” caused the Big Bang, and that evolution is God’s intelligent design of genes and environmental forces. That is very different from assuming all scientists collude in a vast conspiracy, or that God has spiked the mine of scientific inquiry with fake fossils.
It is possible that Santorum does not understand exactly what Intelligent Design is.
Or he’s an idiot.
He’s not wrong about the consequences of sex. I think he’s misguided about contraception and maybe human nature in general, but not about the consequences of sex.
You mean the consequences of uninformed, unprotected, unsafe sex. And Santorum and his ilk are doing what they can to insure that sex is uninformed, unprotected, and unsafe. It doesn’t have to be that way.
I think he thinks there are way more “consequences of sex” than the ones most rational people recognize. His idea of when sex is okay fits within much narrower bounds than they do most people and his idea of what the “consequences” are when people cross those boundaries are not likely to be accepted by most of us. The very fact that he thinks that a married couple having sex within the confines of their marriage should not have access to birth control indicates this. He thinks there is some “consequence” to this kind of sex that justifies a ban on birth control for everyone.
Actually, he’s exactly wrong about the consequences of sex, if you use effective birth control. I’ve been through a few pregnancy scares and can tell you: effective birth control removes a massive barrier to intimacy between partners that don’t want to have kids and makes sex much much more enjoyable.
Santorum comes from a perspective that the possibility of “babies and weenie sores” are the only thing keeping the world from turning into a constant orgy. It’s the same mentality that says the HPV vaccine was bad because it removed a danger of sex. Some people (including Ron Paul, it seems) don’t feel any obligation to find a cure for HIV or AIDS because that’s the punishment you deserve for your activities.
The idea is: the only way to stop people from doing a bad thing is to threaten them with bad results. That’s a monstrous mentality. I hate smoking, but if we could develop cigarettes that had 0% chance of causing cancer, we should make them available immediately. Would that make more people become smokers because it’s suddenly safer? Yes, but they won’t die!
I see what you did there.
And I looked up his bio-- public schools all the way, including college (Penn State).
Which is exactly why Ricky believes you shouldn’t have access to effective birth control, that kind of association between sex and pleasure is what is degrading the moral fiber of society
I think he understands exactly what Intelligent Design is…he sponsored an amendment with his name on it and as much as I dislike him I think his reasoning goes beyond the standard …“I’ve seen a picture of my great-granddad and he’s not a monkey so evolution is false…SO THERE !!”
The moral conservatives feel strongly that Darwinistic evolution promotes a materialistic and competitive worldview that they feel is degrading to the moral fiber of society…the absolute truth of it has very little to do with their reasoning or POV.
I don’t like Santorum, but I do respect him for standing up for what he believes in, rather than latching onto whatever view he thinks will get him elected.
I am glad for you. However nobody has the right to force anybody to follow their beliefs. I do not want to force Santorum to get a vasectomy, or his wife to go on the pill, so he should not be able to force my husband and I to act like catholics.
If you remove the woman’s right to control her own body, you are in essence forcing her to be a walking pregnancy slave. [or to effectively become a nun - totally chaste which means she can not marry as marriage according to Santorum means pregnancy and children to be popping out on a regular basis.]
At the risk of inviting Godwinization I don’t get what’s so admirable about “standing up for what he believes in” when what he believes in amounts to forcing everyone in the world to live by his personal religious values.
Reminds me of my cousin’s cousin who proudly told the story of the owner of a public pool in rural Virginia who filled the swimming pool with cement rather than integrate it. “Gotta admire his dedication to principles!” he said. No, no I don’t gotta admire it.
Rick Santorum and his sincere dedication to his principles can go jump in a cement pool.
Wrong. His reasoning doesn’t even rise to that level.
See? You yourself admit that they don’t “reason” at all – it’s all feelings, woh woooh woooohhhh feeeeeellllings…
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If you remove the woman’s right to control her own body, you are in essence forcing her to be a walking pregnancy slave. [or to effectively become a nun - totally chaste which means she can not marry as marriage according to Santorum means pregnancy and children to be popping out on a regular basis.]
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This is the very reason why so many conservatives oppose contraception. Women being constantly pregnant means they would not be able to take jobs in society that rightfully belong to men. Remember, conservative believe feminism is one of the greatest evils of all time. There was a conservative list of the worst books in human history, The Feminine Mystique was made the cut along with the communist manifesto.
Heh, I didn’t even intend to do that. 
FWIW, I don’t know many Catholics who like the guy. My parents are pretty devout, and they absolutely loathe him – especially my dad.
There’s a reason Pennsylvania rejected him a few years ago.
Other than I have already had an hysterectomy, anybody pulls the Handmaids Tale bullshit on me would wake up gelded.
You know, we make light of this kind of lunacy in rational circles like the SDMB, but this is the kind of perverted “black is white, up is down” toxic mindset that is the principle barrier to human progress. Religion has convinced so many people that good things are evil, and pleasure is shameful, and suffering is laudable.
I was recently watching William Lane Craig debate Sam Harris on the meaning of objective moral absolutes, and Craig rejected Harris’ definition of “good” as “leading to maximal enrichment for sentient beings and minimized suffering”. If that (roughly speaking) isn’t objectively “good”, then what other possible worthy meaning could “good” have?
I’m as misanthropic as the next guy on the internet, but how do you have a real conversation with people who are fundamentally ahumanist or even anti-human?