Sex, With A Condition

Rick Santorum is no hypocrite.

The right-wing ex-Senator has seven children, exercising (with his wife) the inalienable right to have numerous offspring or, as he would think of it, "be fruitful and multiply."

Amid the impromptu debate about homosexual unions Santorum had at a stop in Concord, New Hampshire, the Virginian laid bare his view of conception.      

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the candidate "said he believed that God created men and women for the purpose of reproduction and that the relationship deserved society's sanction as marriage."        CBS News observed Santorum "restating his view that God created men and women with the specific purpose to reproduce" and quoted him asserting "I believe God made man that way."

Credit Santorum, a devout Roman Catholic, with being honest, up to a point.      He could have been more explicit and admitted that he based his theory on Genesis 1:28, in which God commanded “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

If God created men and women to reproduce, certainly, gay men and women need not apply. Single men and women also are excluded.      Surely, Santorum does not believe they should have sex and conceive children- although if they would be so immoral as to have the former, he probably would consider the latter a blessing.           And a married heterosexual couple without children?     Men and women were created for reproducing, he believes; marriage must be sanctioned in order to encourage that.      Presumably, couples who choose not to have children or who are unable to have children are equally at odds with God's will.

For 7,000 years or so, human beings have enthusiastically fulfilled God's preference that they "be fruitful and multiply."       Santorum is seriously mistaken if he believes that, in the absence of prolific conception on the part of his countrymen (countrywomen?), God's command has been (or is) being ignored, given that

The world’s population is now more than 6.8 billion and continues to grow by 83 million people per year. During the last half-century, the world’s population more than doubled. Between 1960 and 2010, the world population rose from 3 billion to 6.8 billion. In other words, there has been more growth in population in the last fifty years than the previous 2 million years that humans have existed. Currently the rate of population increase is 1.2% per year, which means the planet’s human population is on a trajectory to double again in 58 years. 

Even Rick Santorum would not claim that God was speaking directly to Americans.    The latter's admonition appears to have pre-dated the creation of Adam and Eve, who themselves were far more likely to have been residents of the Middle East or Persian Gulf region than of the U.S.A.       Still, for Santorum, the only life worth living consists of a man married to a woman and begetting offspring.         

Once the Iowa caucus drew to a close, Rick Santorum stated, to the praise of pundits everywhere, "What wins- what wins in America are bold ideas, sharp contrasts, and a plan that includes everyone."      Less than 48 hours later, that "plan that includes everyone" already had excluded most Americans.

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