As the South Carolina Primary approaches, and the prospect of Willard Mitt Romney becoming the Republican nominee begins to become more and more inevitable, the game of musical chairs that is the search for the Anti-Romney has reached new lows of desperation. Will Republicans be forced to endure yet another Presidential election cycle with an insufficiently hateful candidate at the top of the ticket? Must Evangelical Christians tolerate a candidate who is capable of even the smallest measure of tolerance?

Given this state of emergency, Evangelical leaders descended on the Texas ranch of Judge Paul Pressler in an effort to find a consensus Anti-Romney to swoop in and save the day. After two days of deliberation and three rounds of balloting, it was decided. Evangelical Christians have found their champion, and his name is Rick Santorum.

READ: Santorum Wins Key Endorsement Of Evangelical Anti-Gay Hate Group Consortium

Tony Perkins, President of certified anti-gay hate group Family Research Council and spokesman for the confab, had this to say:

Rick Santorum has consistently articulated the issues that are of concern to conservatives, both the economic and the social, and has woven those into a very solid platform.

As a gay man, I find any large gathering of Evangelical Christians terrifying, especially when that gathering includes people like Gary Bauer, James Dobson and Don Wildmon, or as I like to call them, the Three Tenors of Hate.

In the olden days when Christians gathered in groups it was probably to talk about Jesus, or The Bible, or perhaps to have potluck dinners. Those days appear to be long gone. The focus of modern Evangelical Christians appears to have narrowed to include only issues involving what people should do be allowed to do with their genitals. Oh, and abortion. They still hate the crap out of abortion. Christians have managed to turn from an organization concerned with spreading the message of God’s love, to one that spends most of its time coming up with long lists of things they hate. It must be very fulfilling.

Regardless, the new president of Jesus is Rick Santorum, and I for one would like to offer him my sincerest congratulations. There were several world class anti-gay bigots they could have chosen, and they went with one of the best. If mean-spirited bullying had a hall of fame, Rick Santorum’s induction would surely be lock.

So, if Rick Santorum is the man who best articulates the views of conservatives everywhere, perhaps we should examine some of those views.

READ: Rick Santorum’s Top Ten Most-Offensive Anti-Gay Comments

It is likely no surprise to you that gay people by and large dislike Rick Santorum, to put it mildly. This is because he says things like this little diatribe, delivered to students and local residents attending a Santorum event a couple of weeks go, as reported by the L.A. Times:

Citing the work of one anti-poverty expert, Santorum 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.”

That’s right. Rick Santorum would rather your child be raised by violent psychopathic convicts than allow them to be cared for by a loving homosexual couple. He doesn’t stop at merely insisting that gay people shouldn’t marry or raise children. He’s been pissed off since the Supreme Court declared that the government couldn’t put homosexuals in jail anymore.

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. You have the right to anything.

Sure. That was in 2003. Perhaps he’s changed his tune. He did say this after all, during the recent Meet The Press debate, via TPM:

I would be a voice in speaking out for making sure that every person in America, gay or straight, is treated with respect and dignity and has the equality of opportunity.

He even outlined his response should his child come out to him:

“I would love him as much as I did the second before he said it,” Santorum said. “And I would try to do everything I can to be as good a father to him as possible.”

Has Rick Santorum softened his views? No. Not even a little bit. Here is quote from his apperance on renowned bigot Bradlee Dean’s radio show, as reported by the Minnesota Independent:

“I stood up from the very beginning back in 2003 when the Supreme Court was going to create a constitutional right to sodomy and said this is wrong we can’t do this,” Santorum said. ”And so I stood up when no one else did and got hammered for it. I stood up and I continue to stand up.” Santorum added, “I do not believe that sexual orientation should be added to hate crimes, but let me be honest, I don’t believe in hate crimes, period.”

I suppose the idea here is that he is OK with being gay, provided you never have sex with anyone. He would also prefer that view be enforced by penalty of law. Rick Santorum has quite a strange definition of “equality of opportunity.”

But it’s not just gay sex that Rick Santorum finds offensive. He’s got it out for you too, heterosexuals. According to Think Progress:

“(Sex) is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.”

He also goes after, of all things, contraception. The same article quotes him as saying:

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Here is a video of him saying it, in case you catch him trying to deny it. Rick does this thing where he says something awful, and then tries to walk it back like he never said it. He tried it recently with his “Black Welfare” comment.

On January 3, Santorum said this:

I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.

When asked about it by Bill O’Reilly a few days later, he said this:

“I looked at that, and I didn’t say that,” Santorum told O’Reilly. “If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — came out. And people said I said, ‘Black.’ I didn’t.”

We have this stuff on tape Rick, so stop lying. I thought Christians had a thing about not lying. Perhaps you should try reading the parts of The Bible that don’t deal with gay sex.

To recap. Rick Santorum thinks homosexuality should be illegal, and that contraception leads to, well, I’m not even sure what contraception is supposed to lead to. Jazz and Gin? The loss of womanly virtue? “Doing things in the sexual realm?” Who knows. Rick Santorum is a crazy fundamentalist. What is clear is that Santorum has a lot of opinions about everybody’s sexual business. He also spends a lot of time thinking about sodomy, which is a little strange for a straight guy. When I look at Rick Santorum I see a man terrified of the future, and so filled with hate that he would see the lives of millions of LGBT people around the country destroyed simply to see the world conform to his extreme religious beliefs.

Evangelicals, on the other hand, see the embodiment of the Republican Party.

This raises a question that I would like to ask you rank and file Republicans out there: Are you sure about this? Do you really want to be associated with Rick Santorum? Every civil rights movement contains opponents like Rick Santorum; vicious, nasty, ideologues who remain dedicated to outdated and vile prejudices long after the rest of society has moved on. You read about guys like this in history class. George Wallace comes to mind. People that you look back on, and wince. Rick Santorum is one of these people. The future reveres men like Harvey Milk, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and makes people like Anita Bryant and groups like the KKK the villain of the story. History doesn’t look kindly upon those who work to deprive others of their civil rights.

Who do you want to be? I understand that you are conservatives, but must your desire for smaller government and lower taxes also mean that you must support the deprivation of rights to an entire class of your fellow citizens? Why are those two things connected? Must the preservation of a strong military and the pursuit of an aggressive foreign policy also mean that you must support efforts to deprive LGBT couples hospital visitation and access to adoption? Is that actually who you want to be? Why would that even make sense?

Let’s be clear. If you throw your support behind Rick Santorum, you are making a decision you don’t get to take back. You are deciding to be an embarrassment to your grandchildren. You are choosing to place a black mark on your personal legacy. You are declaring for all to hear that when the time came to stand up for civil rights, you instead worked to keep those rights from people who have never done you a moment’s harm. It makes you the villain of the story. All I am asking is that you consider this carefully, and make absolutely certain that this is who you want to be. Please think this through. Try to take a long view. Rick Santorum is a bad person, and you, or at the very least your children, will be ashamed that you supported him. Don’t let people like Tony Perkins decide who speaks for you, or who represents your values. Speak for yourself. Do the right thing. Don’t be self-righteous. Be righteous.

 Image, top, by boris.rasin

Benjamin Phillips is a Humor Writer, Web Developer, Civics Nerd, and all around crank that spends entirely too much time shouting with deep exasperation at the television, especially whenever cable news is on. He lives in St. Louis, MO and spends most of his time staring at various LCD screens, occasionally taking walks in the park whenever his boyfriend becomes sufficiently convinced that Benjamin is becoming a reclusive hermit person. He is available for children’s parties, provided that those children are entertained by hearing a complete windbag talk for two hours about the importance of science education, or worse yet, poorly researched anecdotes PROVING that James Buchanan was totally gay. If civilization were to collapse due to zombie hoards or nuclear holocaust, Benjamin would be among the first to die as he has no useful skills of any kind. The post-apocalyptic hellscape has no real need for homosexual computer programmers who can name all the presidents in order, as well as the actors who have played all eleven incarnations of Doctor Who.