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Archive 1

Naming of article

Please note that the phrase "Santorum affair" to describe Santorum's comments and the response it engendered has been used about equally by both sides of the issue. Of course, the left sees the affair being about Santorum's position, whereas the right sees the affair being about the way that Santorum was attacked for his position.

Well, clearly it's both.

The left:

  • objects to his position (or their interpretation of it)
  • attacked him

The right:

  • support Santorum's position
  • object to leftist 'distortions' of it
  • and of course, aren't happy with any 'attacks' on him

--Uncle Ed

In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family. Furthermore

This interpretation of Santorum's remarks is the hinge on which the entire issue turns. We should be careful about it.

I read the interview twice (around a week ago), and I don't recall his specifically calling incest, polygamy, bestiality and homosexual acts "deviant" behavior. If my recollection is faulty, a quick glance at the transcript will settle this.

Based on both my reading of the transcript, and on my general knowledge of conservative attitueds toward sex, I would say that Santorum was making a subtly but significantly different point: He was saying that if American adults are accorded the legal right of doing whatever they want in private then this kind of right would lead to the breakdown of society. This is his over-arching point.

Now, his critics have drawn a conclusion from this point and thus given his remarks an interpretation. This means, they say, that he's calling homosexuality a deviant act and "comparing it to" incest, etc.

They can interpret his remarks any way they want, and we should publish their interpretation. But we should also be VERY CLEAR about the distinction between:

  1. what Santorum said and what HE THINKS HE MEANS by it; and
  2. what CRITICS THINK HE MEANT

I'm not saying the critics are correct or incorrect about their interpretation, or about making attacks on him. I'm just saying that the Wikipedia should be careful not to endorse, and not to even SEEM TO ENDORSE, any particular side. --Uncle Ed 14:50, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Mr. Poor believes that the line

In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family.

is an improper interpretation of Santorum's remarks. Would he accept

In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family.

? If he needs the direct quotations, I'd be happy to provide. --The Cunctator 16:11, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I admit to being unsure about both (a) the exact wording of the line and (b) what Santorum meant by it. The direct quotations would be a big help, sir.

Our readers would probably like to know exactly why critics took offense at Santorum's remarks. "So you're saying homosexuality is as bad as incest", seems to be how they are interpreting it.

My point is not that they misinterpreted him, because that would make me an advocate; my role must remain merely that of an impartial reporter. Rather, my point is that the Wikipedia article should say that they interpreted his remarks as blah, blah, blah -- then the article should explain why that interpretation was offensive to them, if it's not patently obvious. --Uncle Ed 16:19, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Exactly. Okay, going over the interview again I believe that this is what Santorum was trying to say, in addition to his disagreement with a Constitutional right to privacy:

In the interview Santorum describes homosexual acts as part of a class of sexual behavior, including adultery, polygamy, pedophilia, incest, sodomy, and bestiality, which threaten society and the family, as they are not monogamous and heterosexual.

This is getting close to using exactly his language. Eliding the discussion of the constitutional right to privacy:

"I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual...bigamy...polygamy...incest... adultery...behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family....That's not to pick on homosexuality. [The definition of marriage] is not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. "

And what people interpreted him as saying is:

Homosexuality is as bad as incest, polygamy, and bestiality. It should be outlawed.

Santorum's rebuttal is:

  1. I think homosexuality is different from engaging in homosexual acts. Homosexuals make a choice to engage in homosexual acts.
  2. I'm not saying homosexual acts are as bad as bestiality; I'm just saying they're both bad for society.
  3. I'm not saying homosexual acts should be outlawed; I'm just saying that I am against any laws which prevent people from passing laws to prevent such acts, and that I am against any state lifting restrictions on homosexual acts.

--The Cunctator 17:06, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. We agree that Santorum's POV includes #1 & #2 and (probably) #3. People are always amazed when you and I agree on how to write an article; I wonder why that is... ;-) --Uncle Ed 18:42, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

From VfD

  • Santorum affair - page title is idiosyncratic and non-NPOV, split of page was done by User:The Cunctator against consensus of people on Rick Santorum. Daniel Quinlan 10:10, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)
    • merge and redirect. --Jiang | Talk 10:18, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • How is the title POV? Possibly take that thread discussion to Talk:Santorum affair, where someone has already commented saying it isn't. Onebyone 11:48, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • The term is idiosyncratic, assigning "affair" is a comparison to the Iran-Contra Affair or another such event. It wasn't possible or necessary to assign any name until the material was prematurely split off of the Rick Santorum page which covered the material quite adequately and more neutrally.
    • Keep the content - but either merge it with Rick Santorum or take stuff from there and merge it here. As a Brit who's never heard of all this, I found the article both interesting and neutral. Merriam-Webster defines 'affair' as: "a matter occasioning public anxiety, controversy, or scandal" .. and it strikes me that this is exactly what this is, else people wouldn't be getting so hot under the collar about it. Spellbinder
    • Rename to Santorum controversy if you don't like the word "affair", and keep the article separate from Rick Santorum. Keep a redirect from santorum (word) to Savage Love, or move the 'coinage' material to santorum (word) with a link from both "Savage" articles. Uncle Ed 15:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep, but perhaps retitle. Although I'm against this guy and his opinions, I think the article is pretty much NPOV and it certainly needed splitting-off to stop the page getting too big. Santorum affair is acceptable to me, but I would not have a problem with Santorum controversy or Santorum statement on homosexuality if that was more widely acceptable. Anjouli 16:43, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep (as another disinterested brit). Santorum controversy is probably a better title. -- Finlay McWalter 17:16, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Delete. Thie content could be put back where it was. This is part of a larger issue as DanielQuinlan suggests. See User_talk:The_Cunctator/Agglomeration for discussion. -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 17:23, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Delete. This stuff is part of Rick Santorum's story and that's were it belongs, rather than being separated out for whatever pointscoring game is going on. Bmills 17:31, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep and retitle. Certainly don't delete the material. The article is good. Perhaps it could be merged back on the Rick Santorum page although I continue to think this creates problems with the balance of that page. The title or entry "Santorum affair" isn't too good. I think the title should be phrased in a way that suggests a close connection with the Rick Santorum page and also includes an approximate date as an identification (it's possible that he may spark another controversy someday). Something like "Rick Santorum April 2003 controversy." In effect that means it will be probably never be found as a direct entry, and most likely will be found only by searching or following a link from the Rick Santorum page, but that's OK. There isn't going to be any standard, generally accepted short name for the controversy, at least not for a while. Dpbsmith 17:45, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Currently there is a lot of overlap between this article and Rick Santorum. The treatment at Rick Santorum is not nearly as good as the one here; there everything is looked at from the angle of the catholic priest affair, which I think never was the main point, not for Rick nor for his critics. Furthermore, the crucial main quote that was in all the papers and started the whole controversy isn't even given there. Anyway, we should either have a very short summary at Rick Santorum linking here (the option I prefer), or merge this article back into Rick Santorum (many people above seem to be against this). AxelBoldt 21:38, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about this paragraph:

The dissenting opinion in Lawrence vs. Texas took a similar view - that since it had been ruled that the reason the Texas homosexuality law is unconstitutional is that states have no right to interfere with individuals' choices of sexual partners, then the same ruling logically implies that states have no right to legislate against incest, adultery, or any other sexual act.

I understand the argument, and I'm not an American (and certainly not a Texan) but from my understanding no states have legislated against incest or adultery. This statement would make more sense if it said "pedophilia," which is illegal, but I don't want to change it since I don't know what the dissenting opinion actually said. moink

I'm almost sure there IS legislation against incest, but for the life of me, I may just be taking cultural norms and putting them in a law in my head. Pretty sure adultry is not legislated against. Lyellin 21:54, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)
Incest is illegal in many (most? all?) states, though they define it differently in each jurisdiction. Adultery is not illegal anywhere, AFAIK, though it could be considered a violation of (the marriage) contract. Did the court really rule that the state may not interfere in any single individual's choice of sex partners? Or did they rule that two individuals may freely choose to have sex? (this is very different, since children are not of an age that their choice matters) Tuf-Kat 22:00, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)
I'm under the impression that while you can't *marry* your brother, as long as you're both adults no one's going to arrest you for having sex. But I could very well be wrong. moink 23:46, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I believe that for the most part, incest is unfortunately involving a consenting adult, and a related child too young to legally give consent (however I have no statistics on this). When such is the case, incest is a particular subset of pedophilia, which the US does have laws against. --zandperl 23:21, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, but the law is against pedophilia, not incest. So again, right now incest and adultery are not illegal anywhere in the states AFAIK. So somebody might have said that, but it doesn't make sense. moink 23:25, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Commentators

This edit deleted the descriptive word "liberal" for commentators in the first (anti-Santorum's-remarks) group. However, the phrase "conservative commentators" was retained to describe the second (pro-Santorum's-remarks) group. If "liberal" is unacceptable for a description of the first group of commentators, maybe the word "progressive" will be OK? (Even if the logic is that not all commentators who disagreed with Santorum were to the left of center, the vast majority surely were, so it's not wholly inappropriate.) If "progressive" is deleted, fairness would dictate the deletion of the later "conservative" as well. (Oh, and before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I do not agree with Santorum - I think that whatever two consulting adults do in private is their business.) Noel (talk) 6 July 2005 13:49 (UTC)

"progressive" is a pretty loaded word, since it suggests that everyone else is "regressive." I'd be surprised if many nonconservatives defended Santorum, though it's certainly not impossible. Dave (talk) July 7, 2005 12:46 (UTC)

Roman Catholic Church

  • "Santorum said that the scandal involved priests and "post-pubescent men" in "a basic homosexual relationship" (not child sexual abuse), which led the interviewer to ask if homosexuality should be outlawed."

Did he really say this? If so, was there really not complaints that he appeared to have no understanding of the scandal since he was suggesting the scandal was about priests performing normal homosexual acts whereas it was actually about priests sexually abusing children and although the church appears to have gotten worked up over gay priests, that was a completely different issue... Nil Einne 17:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but one perspective that might inform how this issue is written up is the POV that there is a difference between pedophilia(the tendency to abuse little kids) and homosexual pederasty (male-to-male sex with adolescents who are post-pubescent). The distinction some want to make is that a man who abuses a little boy is not necessarily homosexual; he is just a pedophile who gets off by having sex with children. When the young person becomes post-pubescent, then it is not necessarily pedophilia although it could be considered some sort of legal prohibition like statutory rape or sex with minors, which ios different than pedophilia. MPS 17:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
You might be missing my point. The issue I was raising is that it appears to be that Santorum has no understanding whatsoever of the Catholic priest scandal. Many of the abuses were against children. Please see Roman Catholic sex abuse cases. (Some Catholic commentators like to ignore the children and pretend it only involved post-pubescent males so they can try and make the issue about gay priests instead of pedophile priests of course many children were involved). I'm rather surprised that this issue was not raised by commentators. (There is also the issue that even when it comes to post-pubescent boys, it's not particularly clear whether they were choosing the boys because of sexual preference or because of 'access' (situational) reasons). Nil Einne 18:49, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Most significantly tho, the reason why anyone cared was because they were abusing people who they had power over. Whether they were homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual or asexual or whatever is irrelevant. If they were having consensual orgies with members of their congregation, there may have been some scandal, especially in the eyes of the Catholic Church but it wouldn't have been a crime and really no one would have cared that much. People cared because these priests were raping teens and kids. This therefore by definition cannot be a basically homosexual relationship Nil Einne 16:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Casey statement

removed the following sentence:

Subsequently, Santorum's opponent, Bob Casey returned Dan Savage's check. [1]

If it were preceeded with information about Dan Savage donating money to Casey or the reasons that Casey gave for returning the money I could see it be included. As it was it was out of place and confusing. Charles (Kznf) 19:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, I don't think such a section is warranted. I think the donation of money to Casey and his return of that money is tangental to the word santorum which itself is already tangental to the original remarks made by Santorum Charles (Kznf) 19:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Worthy of an article?

I don't really see how this is deserving of an independent article. It just follows a single episode of a single politician. Dozens of politicians go through dozens of such controversies on a regular basis. Sometimes they result in actual public turmoil or outcry. This episode seems like just another blip on the political radar. I'd think mentioning it in the Santorum profile is sufficient. Zz414 23:31, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

That's great that you are able to think and see for yourself. Do you think you could provide us with a list of these dozens of other similar issues? Santorummm 18:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
For instance, George Allen, Joe Biden, and Howard Dean each have made controversial statements, but none of them have independent articles on them. Each of their statements are classified under subheadings of their pages. Zz414 18:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I see this as more of a sub-article or spin-off than a regular article; that is, it has enough detailed, sourced material that to merge it back into the original article about the politician would probably mean a.) cutting some quite good, well-sourced work out, or b.) allowing the current material to overwhelm/dominate the original due to the amount of space it would take up in comparision to the rest of the sections on the page. This is common practice on Wikipedia - for instance, most popular TV series or comic book series articles (X-Men, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.) have seperate, more in-depth articles on their main characters or episodes (not every series will have an article on every episode, but most series that ran for more than a couple of seasons have at least a list of episodes as a seperate article, and particularly famous, high-rated, critically-acclaimed or otherwise important episodes tend to almost always have their own seperate article). Fan fiction (last I checked) had its terminology and legal issues sections made into seperate articles, because there was a lot of material that was useful in some way or another, but which when it appeared on the main article, made it into a daunting, messy, unstable beast of a page - the legal aspects of it are incredibly key, but there just isn't a way to get full coverage of that aspect without having it as a seperate article. The "terminology" includes names of unique subgenres and whatnot that provide fuller coverage of the subject and the subculture surrounding it, but were described by one user as "confusing" to uninitiated, especially as the main article is really meant to provide a general overview of the subject. Again - this creation of subpages when certain aspects of an article subject grow too be too big to keep in the original while still keeping it clean, readable and NPOV, is common practice on WP. Remember: Wikipedia is not a print encyclopedia, and it's things like that that make it so different from print encyclopedias (and in my opinion, often much more comprehensive and much more able to provide good coverage of a subject). ;) Runa27 04:13, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Please stop adding 2006 election stuff to this page.

I removed a rather POV-ful comment about Santorum losing the recent election. Someone else expanded it, gave it its own heading, and turned it into an editorial. The 2006 election is no more relevant to Santorum's 2003 remarks than the rest of his life is, and there's absolutely no reason to just duplicate the Rick Santorum article on this page (they're linked in the very first sentence!). 130.58.235.187 07:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

2006 Election Result section

The personal agenda of the left-leaning contributer who composed the final section of this article (2006 Election) is patently obvious to even the most casual reader. As they themself claim, there were "many issues" behind Santorum's ouster, and highlighting (and exaggerating, I might add) Santorum's legislative stance on homosexuality flies in the face of Wikipedia's standards of objectivity. The section should, at the least, be modified to exclude the contributor's personal and biased view.

No matter how NPOV-ish you could make it, that section shouldn't be in an article about some stuff he said in 2003. This is why there is a page called Rick Santorum in the first place. 130.58.235.187 00:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Gay staff

I removed the information concerning Santorum's ex-staffer. I looked at the pages of other Senators and Congressmen, and I did not see information about their staff's personal lives. I can see how some people might believe it is relevant, but this information does not seem noteworthy. The staffer is not a public figure, did nothing wrong and did not cause his boss to lose the election. I understand that Santorum commented on this matter, but I do not see the purpose of leaving this information up except to try and paint the staffer as some kind of hypocrite. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.99.30.103 (talk) 02:58, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Name of the article

"Santorum controversy" is inappropriate and meaningless. Santorum (like other politicians) was involeved in many controversies. For example he supported Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. --Dezidor (talk) 11:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The article is named for the controversy over santorum (sexual neologism), as the article makes clear. Do you have any suggestions for a different name? TechBear | Talk | Contributions 13:16, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Maybe Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality. I read that there were controversies not only over his views on homosexuality and his endorsement of Specter against Toomey but also over his views on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Social Security, intelligent design and the Terri Schiavo. --Dezidor (talk) 13:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
That title would be misleading: the article is not about Santorum's views on homosexuality but on the controversy dealing with the neologism. Personally, I don't see a reason to have a separate article at all; I think this one should be merged with Santorum (sexual neologism). TechBear | Talk | Contributions 16:57, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

BLP noticeboard discussion

I have started a discussion at the BLP noticeboard about santorum (sexual neologism), Rick Santorum, and santorum that editors here may wish to join. Mike Christie (talk – library) 01:31, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Zoophilia

I suggest that it is a mistake in the opening paragraph to equate zoophilia with bestiality. Zoophilia is an attraction; it exists solely within the mind. Bestiality is an overt action. In general, American law criminalizes only acts. Please recall the references to "thoughtcrime in the novel 1984. Dick Kimball (talk) 14:16, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Apophasis

It appears that Santorum was using an apophasis by mentioning the bestiality in a discussion of homsexuality. Have any of the sources picked up on that? If so, it should be mentioned in the article. Cla68 (talk) 07:33, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal

please discuss this proposal at: Talk:Santorum (neologism)#Proposal to rename.2C redirect.2C and merge content. -badmachine 21:45, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

That discussion is about whether Santorum (neologism) should be merged into this article. To discuss whether this article should be merged into Santorum (neologism), please see below the horizontal rule. 24.177.120.138 (talk) 01:11, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Santorum (neologism) is debating a merge into this article. That seems inappropriate, given the relative notability and coverage of the term "santorum" vs. this event from 2003. I'm proposing that we merge this article into Santorum (neologism), instead. 24.177.120.138 (talk) 22:21, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. i have informed the other editors discussing this here. -badmachine 21:45, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
Wow, I wish I had a newsletter for you to subscribe to?!. 24.177.120.138 (talk) 06:17, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
I see what you did there. No, my proposal was to merge this article into Santorum (neologism), not the other way around. Please feel free to drop another template on the article, but I'm going to have to revert this. 24.177.120.138 (talk) 01:09, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
awesome idea. my mistake on the edit ^above, i thought it was an error. :/anyway:
  • support: this article is about yet another politician in yet another scandal about political correctness. the only notable thing about this is the term. -badmachine 10:08, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Santorum the neologism is a political stunt by Dan Savage that turned into an internet meme and a popular phenomenon of sorts. It isn't really that closely related to the senator chosen as the butt of his joke. This article is quite clearly an elaboration of a section of Rick Santorum in summary style, i.e. a sidebar of a BLP. Considering how frantic certain BLP fanatics have been lately, I think common sense tells us there's no need to shoehorn the two into one article from either side. Now this article is only about maybe three times longer than the section in Rick Santorum - I bet that if people here would accept a few Noam Chomsky style "references" packed with quotes and parenthetical information, and if they weren't excessively stringent about claiming that a section is "too long" and creates "undue weight", then we could just merge it into the Rick Santorum article. Unfortunately I doubt that would really be the case, so it is best to keep things as they are, as a clearly legitimate use of "summary style". Wnt (talk) 21:55, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a political position, NOT an article topic

Every other politician article I've worked on, and there have been a lot, has nothing, a section called 'Political positions' in the main article or his'her campaign article, or (if really extensive) has a separate article about his/her political positions. This is the first article I've seen which not only limits the article to one 1) political position someone has, but limits it further as addrssing (purportedly) only the 'controversy' about it. This is not Wikipedian in any way, shape or form. I suggest you treat Rick Santorum the same way every other politician is treated, and stop trying to make Wikipedia a laughingstock. Flatterworld (talk) 01:18, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Way to AGF there, Flatterworld! No doubt that's the precise intention of every editor whose edits differ from your own. Cheers, Khazar (talk) 05:58, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

A few come to mind:

and so on. There must be hundreds. - Wikidemon (talk) 18:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Coinage of "santorum" by Dan Savage and promotion on search engines

I'd like to replace

After the remarks were made, Dan Savage, a widely syndicated columnist who was offended by Santorum's remarks, hosted a contest in his Savage Love column for his readers to create a definition for "santorum" to be disseminated into common usage. Savage then created a website[31] for the winning definition, which became a top search result for santorum in 2003, unseating the Senator's official website on many Web search engines including Google, Yahoo! Search and Bing.[32][33].[34][35]

with

After the remarks were made, Dan Savage, a widely syndicated columnist who was offended by Santorum's remarks, hosted a contest in his Savage Love column, asking his readers to suggest the most appropriate meaning for the word "santorum," and created a website that featured the winning definition: a mixture of fecal matter and lubricant sometimes produced in anal sex.[1] Due in part to the high number of other sites that link to it,[2] (13,000 in 2009 compared with 5,000 to Santorum's campaign website)[3] Savage's embarrassing "definition" page has consistently been at or near the top of internet search engine results for "Rick Santorum" and "santorum,"[4][5] significantly impacting Santorum's internet profile. Santorum commented in 2011, "That'll take care of itself over time [...] I'm sure [the media] will be writing a lot of things and there'll be lots of links to other things that will far supersede some nasty people that are trying to be crude."[6] Though his neologism campaign has received significant media coverage and the American Dialect Society selected santorum as the Most Outrageous Word of the Year for 2004,[7] Savage's definition has failed to gain wide usage.[Partridge]

Thoughts? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this section of the article needs to be expanded. Gacurr (talk) 16:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
Why? I think I'm proposing a clear, well sourced, concise summary of Savage's campaign. What's your problem with it? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:17, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
We have a main article for this. More detail here is unnecessary. Also, we had an RfC about condensing the other article to one or two paragraphs and merging it into a section here. The result of the RfC indicated not to do this. Gacurr (talk) 22:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
This is one paragraph. How is that too much detail? It summarises the main article, which is twenty five times bigger than this. What does the closed RfC have to do with this? I'm not merging anything. I'm improving the summary. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:39, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Reference to Bestiality

The introductory portion of this article refers to bestiality as follows:

Santorum described the ability to regulate consensual homosexual acts as comparable to the states' ability to regulate other consensual and non-consensual sexual behavior, such as adultery, polygamy, child molestation, incest, sodomy, and bestiality, whose decriminalization he believed would threaten society and the family, as they are not monogamous and heterosexual.

The remainder of the article makes no further reference to it. Either the body of the article should make it clear in what context "bestiality" appears, or its reference in the introductory paragraph should be deleted. As it is, the reference appears without any recognizable context or textual support from within the article.

It seems to me that the regulation of homosexuality and bigamy fall into the class of regulating acts between consenting adults, while pedophilia and bestiality involve acts in which one party is unable to consent. Inserting a reference to a clearly non-consensual act, when the body of the post refers entirely to the regulation of consensual acts, is simply confusing, and perhaps inflammatory, without the provision of some context for the reader.

Franksed (talk) 18:21, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Santorum definition

I have re-added the Dan Savage "santorum" definition in the appropriate spot. I'm not swayed by Drrll's argument that it doesn't belong just because this is "largely a BLP article". (Actually, I would disagree that it is a BLP article at all. Santorum already has a BLP article; this article is meant to explicate the specifics of his "controversy regarding homosexuality", of which the Dan Savage bit is a pretty important and highly-publicized part.)

As it was prior to my edit, the article wholly left out the main thrust of the controversy (no pun intended, I swear). Obliquely referring to the "winning definition" without making it clear that the definition is intended to be offensive and possibly destructive to Santorum's public image seems rather intellectually dishonest to me, and fails to achieve the level of informativeness one would expect from an encyclopedia.

Anyone else have an opinion on this? TremorMilo (talk) 17:08, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

This article definitely fits under the jurisdiction of WP:BLP policy. Here is the applicable language:
Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives, and the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment. This policy applies to BLPs, including any living person mentioned in a BLP even if not the subject of the article, and to material about living persons on other pages. The burden of evidence for any edit on Wikipedia rests with the person who adds or restores material.
The definition is readily available in the main article about the Savage controversy linked to in this article and that article is the appropriate place for the definition. BLP policy also demands use of "high-quality" sources. How many high-quality sources can you produce that actually provide the definition? Drrll (talk) 14:46, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Your point is taken, though it must be said that the reason why "high-quality sources" (like newspapers and television) fail to provide the definition is because they are censored, while Wikipedia is not. Further, while I recognize that the information is contained in another article, I see that as cause to merge both articles rather than simply censor this one.
In deference to WP:BLP policy (and your good faith) I will not re-add the "contentious material". However, I simply don't see how the Savage section can be appropriately encyclopedic without at least mentioning that the santorum redefinition is meant to be crassly sexual in nature. (A point, by the way, which is made in any article on the subject in any high-quality source, and I'll be sure to provide one in my next edit.) What do you think? TremorMilo (talk) 22:10, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
an editor has removed the entire section on the coining of the term. the editor left "A Google-bomb is not newsworthy" as an edit summary. i dont want involved in this, but it seems that it should be linked. -badmachine 10:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Reliable sources that include the full definition include http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/04/history-of-rick-santorum-iowa , http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/04/rick-santorum-still-haunted-by-google-problem-despite-strong-showing-in-iowa/ , http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/04/idUS429187670520120104 , http://www.ilpost.it/2011/12/30/mancava-solo-santorum/ , hence I have reinstated it. 93.96.148.42 (talk) 04:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion of www.spreadingsantorum.com in the article.

Www.spreadingsantorum.com is the site created in response to Santorum's comments on homosexuality. I have added it to this article. Reliable sources that include it include Canada's http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/04/rick-santorum-still-haunted-by-google-problem-despite-strong-showing-in-iowa/ , Germany's http://www.handelsblatt.com/technologie/it-tk/it-internet/us-hardliner-wird-opfer-einer-google-bombe/6026896.html , France's http://www.lefigaro.fr/hightech/2012/01/05/01007-20120105ARTFIG00706-une-google-bomb-mine-la-campagne-de-rick-santorum.php , Italy's http://www.ilpost.it/2011/12/30/mancava-solo-santorum/ , and India's http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120105/jsp/foreign/story_14965588.jsp .93.96.148.42 (talk) 04:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Archive 1
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