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DES MOINES, Iowa -- Rick Santorum took an unusual diversion from his stump speech on the campaign trail here on Tuesday as he paused for a moment to get "metaphysical" with voters about his opposition to same-sex marriage.
After ticking off his usual talking points on the issue -- the importance of family, morality and religion -- Santorum paused in search of a prop within reach to drive his position home. Pointing to a brown paper napkin on a nearby table, Santorum told voters in nearby Iowa Falls that calling gay marriage a marriage is like calling a napkin a paper towel.
"This is a napkin. I can call this napkin a paper towel, but it is a napkin," Santorum declared at the local Hy-Vee grocery store.
"You can it whatever you want but it doesn't change the character of what it is to the metaphysical," he continued. "Now we can call it marriage but doesn't make it marriage," Santorum concluded, shaking the napkin in mid-air.
Santorum's metaphors go beyond paper products. The former senator has also used a water versus beer analogy to make his point. In a video from the Des Moines Register posted on C-SPAN today, Santorum said marriage is like a glass of water, not beer.
"It's like saying this glass of water is a glass of beer. Well, you can call it a glass of beer, but it's not a glass of beer. It's a glass of water. And water is what water is. Marriage is what marriage is," said Santorum , who defines it as a union between a man and woman.
In another appearance Tuesday, Santorum delivered a more muddled message on the issue, reports NBC's Alex Moe. First he told voters, "We can't have 50 marriage laws in this country...it's not equal treatment under the law." But moments later, he said he would not seek to tell states what to do despite his opinion: "I'm against gay marriage but you know I'm not going to tell the states what to do."
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What Santorum is really saying is that he wants everything both ways. First he says you can't have 50 different laws on marriage (that's one for each state Spanky) because that defeats equal protection. then he says only male-female couples are entitled to the equal protection because, well, just because. Kinda like black and white folks couldn't marry each other because, well, jus because it isn't "right." Then it was made OK because the Supremes finally noticed that equal protection means equal and protection. It should come down to the same thing when they notice that the marriage contract (between two consenting adults) should not exclude same-sex couples because this denies them equal protection under the law, the law that gives male-female couples lots of benefits automatically when they get "married." The tricky thing is that it's hard to be fair and a bigot at the same time.
And you wonder why we didn't keep him here in PA? But then we got Toomey, our Super Committee member. Don't blame me for any of this, I'm an independent.
If you have to try to defend this guy,you are in big trouble. Just like the gop congressman who swore on the house floor that he would not put one more penny on the backs of his children,while of course being $117,000 arrears in child support because of his expensive vacations with his girlfriend,this guy is just as big a hypocrite,my guess is that when the dust settles we will find out that Rick is in the closet and he has a huge crush on the BRAWNY paper towel guy !!!