Rick Santorum Is Just Wrong.

Rick Santorum doesn't need facts!
He's got faith.

I was reading through Reason.com, the libertarian site, (yes, I read a lot of publications with very different political views), and thought I'd share with you Rick Santorum's Moral Delusions. Most of you are well acquainted with the hollow claims of social conservatives concerning why the country is going to hell, so this will be only a review.

Santorum insists that gay marriage will destroy the family, "the very foundation of our country." Lamenting the scandal of pedophile priests, he wrote in a Catholic publication: "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

This is the sad strategy that the priests of Yahweh used in the Old Testament: Something goes wrong and the reason why the wolves are at the door is because the people are not pious enough.  Are the Canaanites beating the chosen people at the "Gimme My Land, B*tches!" game? Or is the country going broke because we have overspent for decades?  The solution is God! Lot's of God.

It's a familiar line of argument among religious conservatives, and it has the virtues of clarity, simplicity, and plausibility. But there is one notable weakness in his case: a mass of evidence that amounts to a thunderous refutation.

What? The evidence doesn't support Mr Santorum implying that liberal Boston (the cradle of American liberty) is the cause of the Church's child abuse scandal that has rocked that city? I'm shocked.

In the past couple of decades, most indicators of moral and social health have gotten better, not worse. Crime has plummeted. Teen pregnancy has declined by 39 percent. Abortion rates among adolescents are less than half what they were.

This is where the faith-based blinders for the faithful come in handy in order to ignore pesky facts. But I digress.

The incidence of divorce is down. As of 2007, 48 percent of high school students had engaged in sex, compared to 54 percent in 1991. What "decaying culture" is he talking about?

Perhaps he doesn't understand what decay means?

Consider homicide, which is not only socially harmful but a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Mississippi has the highest rate of church attendance in America, according to a Gallup survey, with 63 percent of people saying they go to church "weekly or almost weekly." But Mississippians are far more likely to be murdered than other Americans.
On the other hand, we have Vermont, where people are the most likely to skip church. Its murder rate is only about one-fourth as high as the rest of the country. New Hampshire, the second-least religious state, has the lowest murder rate.
These are no flukes. Of the 10 states with the most worshippers, all but one have higher than average homicide rates. Of the 11 states with the lowest church attendance, by contrast, 10 have low homicide rates.

 and

What impact does gay marriage have on how kids handle sex? Massachusetts, the first state to legalize it, has less teen pregnancy than the country as a whole. Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Vermont, which have also sanctioned same-sex unions, are also far better than average.

and

Does gay marriage undermine the health and stability of heterosexual marriage? Not so you can tell. Massachusetts has the nation's lowest divorce rate. Iowa and Connecticut are also better than most. Vermont and New Hampshire are about average. In the Bible Belt, by contrast, marriages are generally more prone to break up.

However, these points will not stop the beliefs or the charges levelled by the Religious Right. Ultimately, they are not in the business of verifiable information, building up testable hypotheses, or attempting to be objective. No. They are in the business of making other people as deluded as they are. Their political goal is to remake America in their own broken image.

This is Purgatory.