Rick Santorum Is A One Trick Pony

So far we’ve had Free Market Jesus, Cowboy Jesus, Mack Daddy Jesus, and Finally Come To Jesus as front runners in the Republican primary. Now we’ve got My Jesus Is Your Jesus Dammit topping the political polls. Whether Rick Santorum is a devout Catholic or not really doesn’t mean anything to me. Religious freedom not only means that Mr. Santorum is free to follow the tenets of what he believes in—it also means that I and every other citizen can also choose to be free of the influence of any or all religions.

If Rick Santorum wants to be a Grand Ayatollah, he is welcome to move to Iran. If Rick Santorum wants to be the Pope, he is welcome to move to Vatican City.  No pope, bishop, imam or rabbi has any business dictating public policy in America. In fact, the very ability of all these different religious faiths to co-exist in this country is to a large extent dependent on society’s ability to keep any of them from having the tenets their believers have accepted codified into laws that affect everyone.  

At times, it seems as if Santorum is running to become theologian in chief. He made the bizarre allegation Saturday that Obama’s actions are motivated by “some phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible.” On Sunday, he said by way of clarification that he understands Obama is a Christian, but that the president was somehow misinterpreting God’s truth — as revealed to Rick Santorum — about our duty to be stewards of the Earth.

Rick Santorum could take Republicans down with him

I really don’t understand all of the commotion over abortion, although I can appreciate, if someone is more religiously inclined than biologically informed, why they might be a little hazy when it comes to deciding whether or not it is a fetus or a blastocyst that houses a soul. But to renounce contraceptives, even in theory, as Mr. Santorum has articulated, is to legislate the sex act itself, the kind of infringement upon personal freedom which should be a true blue freedom loving conservative’s worst nightmare.

It is only religion that even has the concept of heresy; in all other disciplines, a variance of belief is seen as good and healthy because it fosters debate, truth-seeking and diversity.

Time to Move On: Religion Has Cost Too Much

So when someone like Rick Santorum leaps onto center stage during his own presidential campaign and tells me that I should ignore the scientific community’s findings but trust Biblical pronouncements unconditionally, I believe that he and his followers need to get their damn heads examined.

You would be hard pressed to hear the term “right wing nut job” cross my lips in real life, but Rick Santorum fits the description so well you can’t help but use it when you refer to him and the intolerant positions he champions. The kind of Christianity that Rick Santorum and his acolytes espouse seems to be more exclusionary than missionary, to be more concerned with vengeance than tolerance, to be more obsessed by domination than contemplation. If there were ever a Right Wing Nut Job Hall Of Fame, Rick Santorum’s name would be engraved above the entrance.