For several months now, we’ve been watching the deranged clown car that is the slate of Republican Presidential candidates.
We’ve watched as we assumed Mitt Romney would sweep every debate and caucus out there. And we watched as everyone who wasn’t Mitt Romney has risen to the top and then fallen off again. We watched this happen to everyone except homophobic former Senator Rick Santorum.
And then Iowa happened. Every other candidate had their time to lead and through the worst of it, they all became contenders — even Michelle Bachmann took the lead early on (before anyone else was really officially in the race).
Then last week, after an incredible amount of focus on Sen. Santorum’s part, he came within 8 votes of Mitt Romney. All of a sudden, the press is paying attention to the oft-ignored, Google problematic Santorum, who lost his 2006 Senatorial re-election bid.
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The Senator has become extraordinarily well-known for his outspokenness when it comes to LGBT people.
Last week, as if to double down on his anti-gay rhetoric, Santorum was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Citing an unnamed anti-poverty expert, he said: “He found that even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids were still better than no father at all to have in their children’s lives.”
Allowing gays to marry and raise children, Santorum said, amounts to “robbing children of something they need, they deserve, they have a right to. You may rationalize that that isn’t true, but in your own life and in your own heart, you know it’s true.”
According to every reliable long-term study, children of gay and lesbian parents are just as well-off, if not better off than those raised by heterosexual parents. Thirty years of credible research and every mainstream child welfare organization has also supported these claims.
And according to the recently-released U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, which chronicled 78 children of lesbian parents over 24 years, there was 0% abuse reported, shattering the national average of 26 percent.
Last year, 19-year old Zach Wahls took the microphone in front of the Iowa House Judiciary Committee and he told the world exactly what it was like to be raised by lesbian parents.
The extraordinarily well-spoken and well-put together teen took the internet by storm with a YouTube video which has now been viewed over 16 million times.
After seeing a status update from Catholics for Equality’s Phil Attey, we contacted Zach to see if he would be up for a legitimate debate with Santorum or any one of his children.
Zach, whose book “My Two Moms” is about to hit the shelves, has agreed to the debate on Santorum’s often-told lies about lesbian and gay families.
This is a legitimate challenge and if the Senator wishes to actually put his own high standards for family up against those of a family headed by a lesbian couple, Zach is ready.
Please sign the petition at Change.org we’ve set up and demand Senator Santorum put his money where his mouth is by debating Zach Wahls.
Sen. Santorum, put your money where your mouth is: Debate Zach Wahls!