Written by Thomas Magstadt   

At least one presidential candidate who inveighs against federal regulation of giant corporations and megabanks favors government regulation of sexual relations between consenting adults. His name is Rick Santorum.

MEMO TO RICK SANTORUM: WE WERE ALL FEMALES ONCE...

It's true. We all start out as females. At a certain stage in the process of embryonic development testosterone kicks in – or maybe not. If it does, the sex organs ("gonads" to use the technically correct term) descend. If it doesn't, they don't. When they do, ipso facto, a boy develops. When they don't...well...it's a girl!

Gender becomes detectable around week ten. The embryo is now called a fetus. The process by which a fertilized egg becomes an embryo only to metamorphose into a fetus and finally emerge from the womb as a flailing infant is called ontogeny.

Amazing, wouldn't you agree? It's science. Now, as a politician who wears his religion on his sleeve, you might say it's a miracle – an example of God's handiwork. Perhaps it is. But an interesting thing about this particular miracle of nature is that it happens in the same way for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians (including, ahem, Mormons) – not to mention atheists.

Imagine that. Or maybe you can't imagine it because you are blind to facts that don't fit your fairytale version of the real world?

Bottom line: You are totally unfit to lead a nation that values freedom. Not because of your beliefs, but because of your moral arrogance and willful ignorance.

Surely, you are sincere when you speak against abortion, gay marriage, and everything related to sexual mores in postmodern secular society. I know that you're the father of seven children with the same woman, that you conceived a child that, sadly, was diagnosed in the womb as having a fatal defect, that the newborn died within a few hours. So, again, the sincerity of your beliefs is not in question.

I know, too, that you and your wife have chosen to school your children at home. I respect your right as parents to make that decision, too. I don't agree with it, but I respect it.

Do you get the point? The principle involved? The state has no presumptive right to intervene in our private lives, to tell us how to raise our children, whether or not to practice birth control, and so on.

You seem to think you and the radical minority of fundamentalist Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants have some sort of Divine mandate to turn this country into a Christian version of Saudi Arabia. At the same time, you denounce Islamic "extremists" who embrace a theocratic vision of the state wherein society is governed by Sharia (religious) law rather than secular laws and formal constitution. Your Puritanical vision of a pristine America differs little from, say, Iran, a country whose politics you view with fear and loathing.

How does an educated man who claims to be a devout Christian justify trumpeting his disdain for both science and social justice as a triumph of moral transcendence? And what gives you the right to force the rest of us to live by your rules, hiding from public what happens in the boardroom but letting the government into the bedroom?

TO RSN READERS:

In this election, let's all agree that the right to privacy, if it means anything at all in post 9-11 America, still protects us from state regulation of sexual relations between consenting adults. And let's agree not to vote for Rick Santorum.