In the wake of the vote in congress on contraception, Romney’s quick switch and Santorum’s constant drivel, I have some serious questions for all of the Republican candidates who have set themselves up as opposed to contraception:

Do you and your wife use birth control? Have you ever?
What type of birth control do you use? Condoms? Hormonal? The pull out method?
Do you plan on having any more children? Have you had a vasectomy? Is your wife in Menopause?
Are you planning on having any children during your time in White House? How will this affect your ability to govern?

It wasn’t political until you made it political, Mr. Santorum et. al. But if you want to know what I do in my private life, and even to control it, then I think I deserve to know what you do.

JFK: making Santorum vomit since 1960

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:35:00 +0800

I assume at this point everyone has seen the video I posted yesterday wherein Santorum willfully misunderstands JFK’s 1960 Address to the Southern Baptist Leaders. In an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos (herein called G. Strom, so as to avoid having to spell that name again) on ABC, G. Strom shows a clip from early in the campaign of Santorum claiming that he read JFK’s speech and “almost threw up.” G.Strom goes on to ask Santorum about the remark, and Santorum embarks upon a very strange defense of his desire to vomit.

Leaving aside the fact that Santorum, a devout Catholic, has decided to go on the attack against our only Catholic president—attacking the precise speech in which JFK defended his own Catholicism—Santorum’s remarks are still rather bizarre. He seems to willfully misunderstand the speech, and yet in doing so makes almost the exact same argument JFK did.

In the interview, G. Strom claims that JFK’s 1960 Address to the Southern Baptist Leaders has been read by millions of Americans. Really? Tell me, millions of Americans, have you read it? While I was probably vaguely aware of the existence of such a speech (I think both Obama’s 2008 speech on race and Romney’s speech on Mormonism have been compared to it) I had never actually taken a look at the text. So I went back and did just that. You can check out the full text of the speech here.

In the speech JFK makes three rhetorical moves:

My religion is a somewhat superficial campaign issue that has been used to distract us from the real problems in this country.
I believe in an absolute separation of church and state, wherein no one is prosecuted or harassed because of their religious beliefs.
I am a thinking person with a conscience and my religious beliefs will not dictate my policies.

In defense of his “throw up” remark, Santorum asks “What kind of country do we live [in] that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?” So where does JFK make that claim?

Ummm… nowhere.

While JFK certainly does say, “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish,” he means this as a defense of religious freedom rather than the imposition of an atheistic state, which is how Santorum chooses to understand it. He actually goes on to cite the exact same protection of religious freedom that Santorum does—the first amendment—which of course says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

So JFK and Santorum are basically arguing for the same thing: that the state shouldn’t be able to tell us how to practice our religion. While JFK explains this as an absolute separation of Church and State, Santorum approaches it from the opposite direction claiming that the first amendment “means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square.” Ultimately, however, they’re both claiming that it shouldn’t matter what religion you practice or don’t practice, we’re all equally American.

So, how does Santorum get to his reading of JFK? I really don’t know. The 1960 speech is actually a fairly beautiful defense of religion, one that you would expect a devout believer like Santorum to admire. Like I said, while the language each man uses is different, the point they are trying to make is largely the same.

At the end of the day, however, I don’t think Santorum actually believes what he is saying. Not the throw up part—that is totally believable—but the fact that people of faith and non-faith belong equally in the public square, that what we believe shouldn’t dictate how the government treats us. He completely undermined this idea when he called Obama’s personal religious beliefs a “false theology,” and he tries to use his response to G. Strom’s question as another opportunity to attack Obama, casting him as a non-believer.

And that probably makes both JFK and Obama “want to throw up.”

Stump Speaking

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Let's ask Santorum: "do you use birth control"

from stumpspeaking.wordpress.com

JFK: making Santorum vomit since 1960

Video