The Drudge Report is hammering Santorum for what, in context, were fairly innocuous comments about President Obama, criticizing his radical environmentalism as a "strange theology... not based on the Bible." This, of course, is both fair criticism and accurate -- environmentalism is a form of theology (hell, hasn't Drudge ever heard of loony lefty environmentalist whackos talking about "Gaia"?) -- and it has long been a standard trope of conservative rhetoric to criticize radical environmentalism on these grounds. Drudge nevertheless reads Santorum as questioning Obama's religion. And then, of course, a Santorum spokeswoman misspoke -- irony alert! -- and said that Santorum had only been criticizing Obama's radical Islamic policies, where in context she plainly meant to say his radical environmentalist policies.
Drudge is a conservative website, of course, perhaps the most visited on the Internet. What's up with him being so hard on Santorum?
It's simple. Drudge has been an important voice in conservatism. But he is also gay. It seems pretty obvious to me that, while he's happy to support conservative Republicans generally, he's going to have a natural antipathy toward Santorum as a gay man, because of Santorum's Catholicism.
Ah, well. It is what it is. You can't please everyone, and there is always going to be tension between the church's teachings on homosexuality and gays whose lifestyles are contrary to those teachings. One would hope that Santorum would have the sense to express his Catholicism in a charitable way without malice toward gays (I think he can), and that Drudge would remember Reagan's 11th Commandment.
We'll see.
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