This one dates back to April 2003, and it certainly helped put Santorum on the map as a culture warrior. It also led to his famous, and still unresolved, “Google problem.” An Associated Press reporter asked then-Senator Santorum about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, and that led to a discussion about whether homosexuality should be legal. At the time, the Supreme Court was considering a case focused on whether states had the right to ban sodomy.
“I have no problem with homosexuality,” Santorum said in the interview, according to a transcript of the tape. “I have a problem with homosexual acts.”
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual 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,” Santorum said later in the interview. “You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”
“You say, well, it’s my individual freedom,” he continued. “Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families.”
Further in the interview, he mentioned pedophilia and bestiality, and came to be seen as viewing homosexual sex in a similar vein. But in fact, he pointed out later, he was saying that homosexuality is not equivalent to “man on child” or “man on dog.”
In June 2003, the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling invalidated antisodomy laws around the country, on grounds of liberty. But Santorum has not eased up on his views of homosexual activity.
