Rebublican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum made a comment about homosexuality and the upcoming Supreme Court decision in the Texas case the other day. Here’s what he reportedly said:

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything,” Santorum said in the interview, published Monday.

He is the chair of the Republican Conference, the third highest ranking position in the Senate. As a result, some of the Democrats think they have another Trent Lott moment, and have called on him to step down from his leadership position.

While I was one of the leading voices to get rid of Trent Lott, I’m having trouble getting very worked up over this, for a couple reasons. First, to be honest, part of the reason that I wanted Lott to step down is that I’ve always wanted Lott to step down–he was an incompetent boob, who gave the Democrats many needless victories. I’ll never forgive him, in particular, for the sham impeachment trial, though, in retrospect, if Clinton had actually been removed, we’d probably have Mr. Gore as President today. Still I would have liked to have had a real trial, with real evidence and real witnesses. The best outcome might have been to show just how corrupt Mr. Clinton was, and for the Democrats to still refuse to remove him, which would have resulted in a more solid victory for the Republicans in 2000.

But I digress.

Despite the joy I took in the opportunity to remove him, what he said really was stupid and thoughtless, and indicative of someone who truly shouldn’t be in a party leadership position. I’m not sure the same is true of Senator Santorum’s comments.

I have to say, though I believe that homosexuals are born, not made, that what he said may be correct on its face, at least in a legal sense. If we must allow consensual gay sex, on what basis can we outlaw the other things he mentioned? Note that I am taking no position on the morality of any of those things, and in fact, not being a conservative, don’t have particularly strong feelings about them. I’ve no problem with gay marriage, or bigamy, or polygamy, or gay polygamy, or even incest (other than the problematic genetic risks). Adultery I might put into a different category, insofar as it’s a betrayal, but I still don’t think that it’s a matter for the law. Of course, he’s also mixing apples and eggs, to a certain degree, because some of the categories are various types of marriage, while others are sexual behavior.

Now it’s clear from context and his history that he thinks that not only is there something wrong with all of those things, but that he also thinks that they should be therefore illegal, and that not allowing laws against consensual gay sex shoves us down the hill on a slick road to perdition. That’s not a position with which I agree, but I don’t see any comparison of that to wistfully dreaming of a return to Jim Crow. I assume that, to the degree that the objectors have a sincere objection (disregarding the simple political and partisan opportunity), it is his lumping homosexuality in with the other things, unless they’re proposing to make them all legal as well (no doubt some of them might).

The upset is over comparing homosexuality, which the modern liberal believes to be an innate characteristic over which one has no control, to other marital arrangements and behaviors that are presumably dictated by choice rather than genetics. (As another digression, I find it interesting that many people who refuse to believe in genetic determinism in, for instance, intelligence will accept it for gender and sexual orientation.) Thus, I’m assuming that they view his comments as bigoted.

Perhaps they are to a degree–as I said, I myself believe that sexual orientation is not within one’s control. But if it is, it’s one on which there’s much less societal consensus than there is on matters of race. Our public debate on sexuality and sexual orientation seems to be about where the race debate was prior to the Civil War, in which there was broad and widespread disagreement about whether people of other races were fully human, with human rights. It’s easy now to see that those who doubted this were wrong, but it really was not a settled issue back then, just as the deterministic nature of homosexuality is not today, either scientifically or societally. Thus, from that standpoint, Mr. Santorum has a legitimate viewpoint, even if it may not be scientifically correct, and I don’t think that he should be censured, or forced out of power over it. It’s a matter for the voters.

Yale law professor Jack Balkin has commented on this subject over here, echoing much of what I say, except putting more of a legal and constitutional gloss on it.

However, having said all that, I do want to expand a little on my view of the matter. While I believe that some people are born homosexual (whether because of genetics, or womb environment, or both), and others born heterosexual, I also believe that those are not the only two options.

In fact, I believe that sexual orientation (ignoring the issue of gender, which is even more complicated), which is defined as which sex you are physically attracted to, relative to your own, is not a binary situation–it is a continuum. I suspect that it’s a skewed distribution, with many or most people being heterosexual, very few being homosexual, and a gradient between them of various degrees of bi-sexuality.

Assuming homo to the left, and hetero to the right, I personally fall on the extreme right side of the distribution. While I don’t think that it is immoral to have sexual relations with the same sex, I cannot in any way contemplate doing it myself–the very thought of the act disgusts me (which is not to say that people who are homosexual disgust me per se). I can’t imagine any amount of “therapy” that would result in my seeking gratification in that way, or perhaps even tolerating it or being able to perform. Given a choice between that, and self congress, I’d choose the latter.

I assume that someone on the extreme left side of the distribution feels similarly–it’s simply not possible for them to feel attracted to someone of the opposite sex.

Of course, there are many people who fall somewhere in between. They are the ones who actually do have a “choice.” I know that they exist as well, because they are bisexual, and clearly have the capability of switch hitting. I suspect that they’re the ones who are the most outspoken on the subject, because for them, it does come down to an issue of morality, and furthermore, I suspect that they believe that everyone is like them, so that they believe that homosexuals really are being contrary and deliberately perverse.

Someone who does have a choice, who is attracted to the same sex, but also finds the opposite sex attractive, will simply think themselves superior to those who engage in what they view as sinful behavior. They’ll say to themselves “I can resist the temptation, why can’t (s)he? They must be weak and morally corrupt.” They’ll view any argument like the one that I make here simply as an excuse–they won’t believe that it’s impossible for someone to be attracted to the opposite sex–after all, they’re capable of going either way, why aren’t those perverts?

This offers an explanation for the “conversions” that are so controversial, in which (usually through some church-based therapy), homosexuals “become” heterosexual. I suspect that in the cases that it doesn’t work, it’s because you can’t make a homosexual into a heterosexual, any more than you could convert me from straight to gay. The success stories are not really conversions from homosexuality–they’re simply a persuasion of a bi-sexual (who was never truly homosexual) to no longer indulge in homosexual activities.

Homosexual behavior (which can be engaged in by both homo and bisexuals) has to be distinguished from homosexual orientation. The former is an act, while the latter is a desire, and often one that cannot be altered.

Until we develop a more sophisticated and nuanced view of issues like this, I suspect that the threads will continue to flame ignorantly on over at Free Republic, and that Republicans will continue to make potentially inflammatory statements, and that opportunistic Democrats will continue to bash them over it.