"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (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," the Pennsylvania lawmaker said in a recent interview, fuming over a landmark gay rights case before the high court that pits a Texas sodomy law against equality and privacy rights.

He and his wife, Karen, have seven children including, as Santorum puts it, "the one in Heaven." Their fourth baby, Gabriel Michael, died in 1996, two hours after an emergency delivery in Karen Santorum's 20th week of pregnancy. The couple took Gabriel's body home to let their three other young children see and hold the baby before burying him, according to Karen Santorum's book of the ordeal, "Letters to Gabriel."

But let's examine Santorum's quote in the best possible light, shall we? An optimistic interpretation would be that he is making a constitutional point about judicial restraint. That's fair enough. It's a perfectly debatable proposition whether there is a right to privacy in the Constitution, and it doesn't involve anyone's views of homosexuals, abortion or any other matter. But Santorum must also know that such a right to privacy is now settled constitutional doctrine: It underpins the right to abortion and even the right to practice contraception. If he wants to abolish it, he must surely hold out the possibility of the government once again policing some of the most intimate sexual and reproductive matters imaginable, regulated by nothing but majority opinion. Santorum's position is therefore that there should be no constitutional restraint on the power of government to regulate sexual morality -- even within your own bedroom. The only restraint -- especially against any sexual minorities -- would be mandated by majority decisions.

Santorum is chairman of the GOP conference in the Senate, third in his party's leadership, behind Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The White House did not immediately return a call seeking comment, and a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Frist declined comment.

The silence with which President Bush and the Republican Party leadership have greeted Sen. Santorum’s remarks is deafening. It is the same silence that greeted Senator Lott’s offensive remarks in December. It is a silence that implicitly condones a policy of domestic divisiveness, a policy that seeks to divide Americans again and again on the basis of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.

It is a policy that must end, and it is a policy that will end with a Dean Presidency. This Saturday, April 26th, marks the third anniversary of the signing of the Civil Unions bill in Vermont. I signed that bill because I believe no human being should be treated with less dignity than others simply because that person belongs to a different category or group. I also believe that, as Americans, it is our duty to speak up when others are treated wrongly—especially when others are treated wrongly by a member of the Senate leadership.

I urge all Americans, and members of both parties, to join me in condemning Sen. Santorum’s remarks. They are unacceptable, and silence is an unacceptable response. By standing up against such divisive rhetoric—whether one is gay, lesbian, or straight—we can begin to achieve the American ideal of equal rights for all people.