Guest Blog Post: When Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ Community Tried to Warn of Rick Santorum’s Bigoted Politics in the early 1990’s

Guest Blog Post by Billy Hileman.

Santorum Gay Community
1994 issues of Planet Queer, a local queer paper that was published from 1994-2004

Santorum’s pathetic white supremacist rant that erased the archaeological evidence that 50-60 million people lived on the two continents that white people later named N and S America, was surely harmful. CNN should fire Santorum and promise that they will not employ other white supremacists.

We knew Santorum was dangerous in 1990 when he won a U.S. House seat and then beat Sen. Harris Wofford in the 1994 Republican take-over of the U.S. House and Senate.

In 1994, Chris Young (who, for about 2 decades did more than anyone else in western PA, to educate LGBTQ folks about electoral politics and the candidates’ positions) of the League of Gay and Lesbian Voters tried to warn us. The late professor Marshall Singer was frustrated with the lackluster Wofford campaign and held a “Stop Santorum” meeting to get the gay community off its ass. Singer said the gay community was doing nothing. At the same time, the gay community was getting a cold shoulder from Wofford, who apparently did not think queer support was going help him against his far right opponent. Wofford was married to Clare Lindren who died in 1996. Wofford married his male companion in 2016.

In advance of the 1994 elections, Lesbian Avenger Donna Riley and Planet Queer writer Barry Atkins infiltrated a Christian Coalition Leadership School conference at the Beaver County Community College as “stealth queers.” Later they called the Post-Gazette (when it was sort of a newspaper) and the TV stations to let them know of Santorum’s far right views that they were complicit by ignoring them. Mark Friedman organized phone solicitation fundraising for Wofford. And Scott Safier was organizing volunteers for phone banking. It wasn’t enough.

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2004 issue of Planet Queer, a local queer paper that was published from 1994-2004

In 2003, Santorum called homosexual acts a threat to the American family, and he called the rape of children by Catholic priests, “a basic homosexual relationship.” He is a multicultural bigot.

From the 2003 interview with an Associated Press (AP) reporter:

Santorum: “ . . . In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And, when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —“
AP: “I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about “man on dog” with a United States senator, it’s sort of freaking me out.”

Santorum is a vehemently anti-choice politician and views women working outside of the home as undermining child care. If that’s not enough, CNN, he denies that global warming is due to humans burning fossil fuels, is OK with torturing prisoners at Guantanamo, and believed that intelligent design should be taught along side of evolution.
And, CNN still has not fired him for his disgusting white supremacist denial of indigenous cultures in this hemisphere.

Santorum needs to shut up. CNN needs to stop inflicting him upon its viewers.

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