Rick Santorum Has Thoughts on Buttigieg's Sexuality, Trump's Affairs

Rick Santorum today said something other members of the Christian right have been reluctant to -- that if Franklin Graham criticizes Pete Buttigieg for being gay, he should criticize Donald Trump's marital infidelities.

This week Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (founded by his late father), tweeted that the South Bend, Ind., mayor and presidential hopeful Buttigieg should repent of being gay, as the Bible considers it a sin. Graham, however, has been willing to overlook Trump's transgressions and has expressed doubt that some of them happened.

Friday on CNN's New Day, host John Berman pressed Santorum, the notoriously homophobic former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, about the "relativism" of Graham's comments.

In a somewhat garbled response, Santorum said, "You have every right to call him out on that. If he says that about Pete Buttigieg, then when Donald Trump's accusations come up about marital infidelity and other things that's equally as sinful," Graham should speak up.

Berman then brought up that infidelity is a choice, while the consensus is that people are born gay. He asked Santorum if he believes people are born gay, which the former senator declined to answer. Santorum did say that the majority of Christian churches believe homosexuality is a sin -- but actually, there are now many that do not, instead supporting committed same-sex relationships, performing marriages for same-sex couples, and ordaining LGBTQ clergy.

Santorum, a Republican, is known for his many anti-LGBTQ stances, including his infamous 2003 comment that if the Supreme Court recognized a right to any type of consensual sex, it could find a right to "man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be." Later that year the court struck down antisodomy laws, but legalization of pedophilia and bestiality has not followed.

The comment led journalist Dan Savage to ask his readers for a new definition of the word "Santorum," and the winning entry defined it as a by-product of anal sex. Google searches for "Santorum" still turn up that definition.