Santorum says liberalism caused Boston's pedophile abuse

Boston, the city with the most prudish reputation on the East Coast? This would be funny if it wasn't so seriously sick. ---BBB

Santorum resolute on Boston rebuke
Insists liberalism set stage for abuse
By Susan Milligan, Boston Globe Staff | July 13, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, refused yesterday to back off on his earlier statements connecting Boston's ''liberalism" with the Roman Catholic Church pedophile scandal, saying that the city's ''sexual license" and ''sexual freedom" nurtured an environment where sexual abuse would occur.

''The basic liberal attitude in that area . . . has an impact on people's behavior," Santorum said in an interview yesterday at the Capitol.

''If you have a world view that I'm describing [about Boston] . . . that affirms alternative views of sexuality, that can lead to a lot of people taking it the wrong way," Santorum said.

Santorum, a leader among Christian conservatives, was responding to questions about remarks he made three years ago on a website called Catholic Online. In those comments, Santorum said, ''It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm" of the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

The junior senator is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and is considered a possible candidate for his party's presidential nomination in 2008, if he wins reelection to a third Senate term next year.

''I was just saying that there's an attitude that is very open to sexual freedom that is more predominant" in Boston, Santorum said yesterday. Reminded that the sexual abuse occurred across the country, Santorum said that ''at the time [in 2002], there was an indication that there was more of a problem there" in Boston.

The senator's words sparked instant reaction from Massachusetts political leaders, who ridiculed Santorum's suggestion that priests were driven to abuse children by the city's liberal culture.

US Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, called Santorum ''a jerk" and pointed out that the senator tried to use the levers of the federal government to block the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, an act that Santorum likened to ''execution." An autopsy found that Schiavo's brain was half the normal size and that she could not see anything.

''This is one of those people who claims to have had eye contact with a blind woman," Frank said.

Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Lowell, said, ''There's not much you can say about someone who claims to have read the Bible cover to cover and came away from it thinking it encourages hatred for fellow human beings."

David Wade, spokesman for Senator John F. Kerry, said, ''Sometimes you wonder whether Rick Santorum can possibly believe the radically wrong words that escape his mouth."

Santorum has startled Washington in the past. In a 2003 interview with the Associated Press, he linked ''man on child" and ''man on dog" sex with homosexuality, describing them as deviant behaviors that threatened traditional marriage. Earlier this year, he apologized for comparing the Democrats blocking President Bush's judicial nominees to the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.

The senator faces an unexpectedly tough race for reelection next year. Pennsylvania state treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., the expected Democratic candidate, has been ahead or even with Santorum in recent polls, although Casey hasn't begun actively campaigning.

Casey, like Santorum, is antiabortion, and Democrats contend that the Pennsylvania contest offers one of their best chances to pick up a Senate seat next year.

Santorum, now 47, came to Washington as a House member in 1991 and joined a group of young, assertive conservatives bent on shaking up the institution. Elected to the Senate in 1994, he quickly moved up the Republican ranks. With his vocal stances against abortion, stem cell research, and the right-to-die movement, he has become a favorite of evangelicals, said Jon Delano, who is a political analyst at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

''He speaks exactly as he feels," Delano said. ''You either accept it or reject it. There's nothing disingenuous about Rick Santorum."

The Pennsylvania senator recently penned a book, ''It Takes a Family," that blasts two-income families, divorce, cohabitation before marriage, and other social trends he considers liberal ills.

The book, set to be released later this month, blames ''radical feminism" for encouraging women to work outside the home. ''In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might confess that both of them don't really need to or at least may not need to work as much as they do," Santorum wrote.

Jay Reiff, Casey's campaign manager, predicted that Santorum's outspokenness might get him into trouble with Pennsylvania voters.

''It's sort of being out of touch," Reiff said. ''For hundreds of thousands of families, the option of having a stay-at-home mother is not there from an economic standpoint. ''It's not because they are bad budgeters or are selfish."

But Santorum's comments about Boston, like some of his other stances, may play well with cultural conservatives in Pennsylvania, who appreciate Santorum's opposition to gay marriage and abortion, political observers said.

''I think he probably has written off Massachusetts," said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who is also a potential 2008 contender.