SANTORUM'S HOOF AND MOUTH DISEASE

·        National civil rights groups recently thumped Santorum after video surfaced of him discussing Medicaid and food stamps. He appears to say: "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.

Santorum's comments on sex and faith as well as race have led to controversy during his 16 years in the House and Senate and when he was an author, radio talk-show host, think-tank fellow and Fox News commentator.

·        Santorum once compared homosexuality to bigamy, incest and adultery, provoking a firestorm of protest from gay rights supporters. He also blamed Boston's liberal political culture for the clergy sex abuse scandal that shook its Catholic diocese, drawing a thunderous rebuke from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate floor.

Perhaps his most talked-about comment is one that came in a 2003 interview with The Associated Press.

Santorum angered gay rights advocates by saying states should have the right to ban gay sex and by comparing homosexuality to bigamy, incest and adultery. He cited a pending Supreme Court case over a Texas sodomy law and said: "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery."

·        It was another issue entirely that earned Santorum the wrath of many Democrats in Massachusetts.

In a July 2002 column for Catholic Online, Santorum wrote that promoting "alternative lifestyles" feeds aberrant behavior, such as priests molesting children.

"Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture," he wrote. "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."

Massachusetts Democrats were outraged. Romney, then the state's governor, called the remarks unfortunate.

·        A few years later, Democrats went after Santorum during his 2006 re-election bid for statements in his book "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Book" that they claimed were insensitive to the struggles of two-income families. Source