Andrew Sullivan Makes an Interesting Point

I just had to see if I could actually manage to type that without bursting into flames. But, in all seriousness, I think he's right. It seems that little Ricky Santorum has been misrepresented by the press. The original reports of Santorum's AP interview had him saying:

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consentual (gay) 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. You have the right to anything.

As Sully notes,

First off a simple question: What did Santorum actually say? The reason I ask this is that I don't know anyone who speaks in parentheses. Did the AP reporter add the "(gay)" part to provide context for the quote? But such context could easily be provided by a simple sentence beforehand, while leaving the actual quote intact. From the story, it seems as if reporter Lara Jakes Jordan added the "(gay)" in order to get around her poor sentence construction. If so, she ruined a huge and damaging Freudian slip. Because it's clear from the quote that simply consensual sex -- gay or straight -- is precisely what Santorum wants to police.

I'm not entirely sure why he calls it Freudian, but nonetheless if one goes to the original transcript it's pretty clear that Santorum wasn't limiting himself to gay sex, but all consensual sex. One should give him credit for this, actually. If one thinks the state has the power to outlaw 'gay sex,' then the state should be free to outlaw all kinds of things. Santorum doesn't believe there is any constitutional prohibition of this. In addition, little Ricky would clearly vote to outlaw all these nasty horrible things, but he does think it should be left to the states to decide.

Over to you, Larry Flynt...