Republican Senator Rick Santorum explains his frothing homophobia this way: "I have no problem with homosexuality -- I have a problem with homosexual acts," which is kind of like saying "I have no problem with soccer -- I have a problem with kicking the ball around."

Come on, Rick, just come on out and say it: you really just despise gays.

That pillar of anti-intellectualism Gary Bauer rushed to Santorum's defense, declaring, "I think that while some elites may be upset by those comments, they're pretty much in the mainstream of where most of the country is."

Well, it wasn't long ago the mainstream believed in spontaneous generation and that the earth was flat, Gazza, and a lot of folks do still believe in ghosts and goblins and the Holy Spirit, too. But I ain't convinced that the mainstream is so anti-gay anymore. So would you care to proffer some evidence to bolster your claim, Mr. Bauer?

I thought not.

In a bid to wrestle down Gary Bauer for least intellectual observation of the day, Santorum has also recently said, "The basic liberal philosophy is materialistic, is relativistic, to the point of, you've got candidates for president saying we should condone different types of marriage. That is, to me, the death knell of the American family.''

I say any type of marriage allows for the raising of a healthy child who's the recipient of living care and attention has got to be a good one, whether it involves a man and a woman, two men, three women or the Manchester United football team. There are plenty of heterosexual couples doing lasting damage to psyches of our society's little ones. I doubt most gay couples could do any worse. In fact, they might do better than many, considering all they could teach so many of us about acceptance of others' differences.