Photo: Rick Santorum. Credit: Gage Skidmore/flickr.
Former Pennsylvania senator and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he does not know if being gay is a choice, but pointed to those who identify as ex-gay as evidence that some people have changed their sexual orientations.
In the second part of a two-part interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, Santorum sparred with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow over a variety of issues, including the role of the Supreme Court, whether Congress could overturn a decision legalizing marriage equality, and his previous comments on same-sex marriage. Maddow asked Santorum whether people choose to be gay, at which point Santorum hedged, saying he did not know, but he suspects there are a number of reasons influencing whether someone is gay.
“If it’s an immutable characteristic — you don’t know if it’s immutable or not?” Maddow asked.
“I don’t know,” Santorum responded, noting that, if homosexuality is found to be immutable, it raises other issues such as sex-selective abortions. “If you determine that one of your children is gay, shall we pass a law saying you can’t abort a child because you found out that child’s gonna be gay? You can’t abort a child because you found out that child is a woman?”
Maddow again pressed him to answer the question: “Do you think that some people choose to be gay?”
“There are people who are alive today who identified themselves as gay and lesbian and who no longer are,” Santorum said. “I’ve met people in that case. So I guess maybe in that case, maybe they did.”
“You think people can choose to be heterosexual?” Maddow said. “You chose to–“
“All I’m saying is I do know people who have lived a gay lifestyle, and no longer live it,” Santorum replied.
“Do you believe it can be orchestrated, like you can make a person not gay anymore?” Maddow asked.
“I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about these things, to be honest,” he said.
Throughout the interview, Santorum defended his conservative opposition to marriage equality, arguing that the Supreme Court, over the years, has made decisions on LGBT rights that were not constitutionally-based and open the door to other issues, such as whether plural marriage is legal. Maddow brought up Santorum’s infamous comments from 2003 likening same-sex marriage to “man on dog” relations, which Santorum made when arguing in favor of keeping in place the sodomy laws that were overturned by the Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence v. Texas. Maddow eventually elicited a partial apology from the former senator.
“I’m saying that people will make arguments for consensual activity,” Santorum said, initially defending his comments.
“Why did you say the word ‘dog’?” Maddow asked.
“I was quoting Justice White in his 1986 decision, and that’s why I was referring to his opinion that that was the majority opinion at the time,” Santorum said.
“You see how it hurt gay people to put it that way?” Maddow asked.
“Trust me, I wish I had never said that,” Santorum answered. “It was a flippant comment, made to a reporter who, in my opinion, was not being particularly professional in her interview. But that’s not an excuse for me. I take responsibility for what I said.”
Maddow then asked whether he regretted the comment, to which Santorum responded, “Absolutely, I regret it. It was a flippant comment that never should have come out of my mouth, but the substance of what I said, which is what I’ve referred to, I stand by that…. I wish I hadn’t said it.”
See Maddow’s interview with Santorum below (Video credit: MSNBC).
"The term homosexual was coined in 1869," says Jonathan D. Katz, the co-curator, along with art historian Johnny Willis, of The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939.
"It was actually written originally in a letter between the coiner of the term -- a man by the name of Kertbeny to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first gay rights campaigner in history. He wrote the first coming out letter and formed the first society for gay rights, and they're having a big fight because it is Ulrichs who has the argument that homosexuals are a third sex, and it's Kertbeny who argues that actually every human being alive has the capacity for same sex or different sex desire, that homosexuality is actually a universal human capacity, just like heterosexuality. He says both are universal capacities.
With Obergefell at risk and 32 states poised to restrict same-sex marriage, LGBTQ advocates push to enshrine protections at the state level.
By Maximilian Sandefer
August 6, 2025
On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Abortion rights were now no longer guaranteed nationwide as the issue was left up to the states. This shock reversal of over 49 years of precedent left reproductive rights activists scrambling as anti-choice state laws stemming from as far back as 1864 were revived and reinstituted.
As people's ability to access to reproductive care dwindled in conservative-led states, activists also found their footing. The 2024 election saw abortion rights ballot measures win in seven out of ten states. As we navigate a landscape where it will likely be a long time before we see any form of successful federal legislation protecting a woman's right to choose, state-by-state activism seems to be the driving force behind change.
The former Kentucky clerk -- and anti-LGBTQ culture warrior -- who went to jail rather than issue licenses to same-sex couples is now targeting the landmark 2015 ruling.
A decade after catapulting to right-wing stardom, Kim Davis -- the former Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who chose jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality nationwide.
Represented by the anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel, Davis has formally asked the nation’s highest court to strip away the right of same-sex couples to marry.
A Mike Huckabee acolyte and four-time married fundamentalist zealot, Davis rose to fame in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to any couple -- gay or straight -- after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision struck down all state-level bans on same-sex marriage, including Kentucky’s. Ordered to comply, she instead spent six days in jail for contempt of court.
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Former Pennsylvania senator and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he does not know if being gay is a choice, but pointed to those who identify as ex-gay as evidence that some people have changed their sexual orientations.
In the second part of a two-part interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, Santorum sparred with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow over a variety of issues, including the role of the Supreme Court, whether Congress could overturn a decision legalizing marriage equality, and his previous comments on same-sex marriage. Maddow asked Santorum whether people choose to be gay, at which point Santorum hedged, saying he did not know, but he suspects there are a number of reasons influencing whether someone is gay.
“If it’s an immutable characteristic — you don’t know if it’s immutable or not?” Maddow asked.
“I don’t know,” Santorum responded, noting that, if homosexuality is found to be immutable, it raises other issues such as sex-selective abortions. “If you determine that one of your children is gay, shall we pass a law saying you can’t abort a child because you found out that child’s gonna be gay? You can’t abort a child because you found out that child is a woman?”
Maddow again pressed him to answer the question: “Do you think that some people choose to be gay?”
“There are people who are alive today who identified themselves as gay and lesbian and who no longer are,” Santorum said. “I’ve met people in that case. So I guess maybe in that case, maybe they did.”
“You think people can choose to be heterosexual?” Maddow said. “You chose to–“
“All I’m saying is I do know people who have lived a gay lifestyle, and no longer live it,” Santorum replied.
“Do you believe it can be orchestrated, like you can make a person not gay anymore?” Maddow asked.
“I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about these things, to be honest,” he said.
Throughout the interview, Santorum defended his conservative opposition to marriage equality, arguing that the Supreme Court, over the years, has made decisions on LGBT rights that were not constitutionally-based and open the door to other issues, such as whether plural marriage is legal. Maddow brought up Santorum’s infamous comments from 2003 likening same-sex marriage to “man on dog” relations, which Santorum made when arguing in favor of keeping in place the sodomy laws that were overturned by the Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence v. Texas. Maddow eventually elicited a partial apology from the former senator.
“I’m saying that people will make arguments for consensual activity,” Santorum said, initially defending his comments.
“Why did you say the word ‘dog’?” Maddow asked.
“I was quoting Justice White in his 1986 decision, and that’s why I was referring to his opinion that that was the majority opinion at the time,” Santorum said.
“You see how it hurt gay people to put it that way?” Maddow asked.
“Trust me, I wish I had never said that,” Santorum answered. “It was a flippant comment, made to a reporter who, in my opinion, was not being particularly professional in her interview. But that’s not an excuse for me. I take responsibility for what I said.”
Maddow then asked whether he regretted the comment, to which Santorum responded, “Absolutely, I regret it. It was a flippant comment that never should have come out of my mouth, but the substance of what I said, which is what I’ve referred to, I stand by that…. I wish I hadn’t said it.”
See Maddow’s interview with Santorum below (Video credit: MSNBC).
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