GRiTS

sleeplessinsouthie:

Elizabeth Santorum has gay friends. Just like her father. And Rick Warren and Joel Osteen and Donny Osmond and Sarah Palin. All the high-profile homophobes seem to have gay friends. Or at least they claim to have gay friends. No one has ever met—and no reporter has ever asked to verify the existence of—one of Rick Santorum or Elizabeth Santorum or Rick Warren or Joel Osteen’s gay friends.

Um… political reporters? Stop accepting homophobes’ claims of gay friendship at face value. Elizabeth Santorum says she has gay friends who support her dad based on his family platform? That is an astonishing assertion. Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his having compared sex between consenting adults of the same sex to child rape and dog fucking? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his having asserted that gay relationships are a threat to “homeland security”? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his opposition not just to gay marriage, but to any legal recognition of same-sex relationships at all (no civil unions, no domestic partnerships)? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his promise to write anti-gay bigotry into the US Constitution, forcibly divorce every same-sex couple that has gotten legally married in the US over the last decade, and reinstate DADT? Who are these gay people who support Rick Santorum for president despite his opposition to adoptions by same-sex couples?

Who are these faggots?

Political reporters? When Elizabeth Santorum says, “I have gay friends and they support my dad because they agree with him about family issues,” i.e. her dad’s opposition to gay people having a families of their own, your immediate response should be a request for the names and phone numbers of some of these gay friends. Because that claim requires checking out before you put it in print or pixels. Reassure Elizabeth you’ll quote her friends anonymously to protect them from potty-mouthed gay bloggers, they can talk to you on background or whatever, but tell her that you’re going to need to verify the existence of these gay friends. Because you’re a journalist, not a stenographer. You’ll either catch Elizabeth Santorum in a revealing lie—what does it tell us about this moment in the struggle for LGBT equality that even homophobes like Elizabeth and her dad perceive a political risk in being perceived as homophobic?—or you’ll land a fascinating interview.

This was Dan Savage’s response to a Huffington Post story that repeats, without any apparent attempt at corroboration, that Elizabeth Santorum, Rick’s daughter, has gay friends “who support her father’s candidacy based on his economic and family platforms”.