Taking a leap
AOL is beta testing a weblog system right now, and given that I'm an AOL employee, it only seems right that I should try it out. So for now, at least, any new entries to PermagrinGirl can be found at PermaGrinGirl.

It's got some nifty features. I'm particularly fond of their IMBot that will allow you to publish to your blog as easily as sending an IM. They still have some bugs to work out - in particular in formatting and html support - but the beta appears to be completely useable so far.

Cheers!
Celeste

Ta Ta For Now...
I'm deep in the middle of buying my first house. Cue stress, panic, uncertainty, confusion, fear, and hope... in that order.

So while I'm taking care of that, and trying to keep up with work, I'll be taking a break from blogging. We close August 27th, and I doubt I'll be rational again until it's all over. Once things have settled down I'll be back.

Cheers!
Celeste

It's all about the percentages
The Clintons have lost their request that the government reimburse them for the 3.58 million dollars in legal fees they racked up defending themselves during the Whitewater probe. The panel did say they should receive $85,312 to pay for the cost of responding to the Independent Counsel's report. The Post drags out the expected 'experts' who claim to be surprised that the Clintons lost:

The panel's decision appears to divert dramatically from past practice, according to a law professor who is a former Iran-contra prosecutor and an expert on the independent counsel law. John Q. Barrett, who was an associate counsel for independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, said federal courts have been generous in reimbursing legal bills and have avoided drawing conclusions about whether the subject otherwise would have been investigated.

"Before today, the court was generally generous and, for whatever reason, today took a dramatically different approach," Barrett said. "Many suspect a political motivation in this case. I don't necessarily subscribe to that, but it is very different."

And the Clintons are complaining about it too:

The Clintons complained through their attorney yesterday that two former Republican presidents fared much better in securing repayment of their legal bills in the Iran-contra investigation. George H.W. Bush was awarded $272,000, or 59 percent of the reimbursement he sought, and Ronald Reagan was awarded $562,000, or 72 percent of his request.

Okay, so the former presidents you're referring to received a combined $834,000 in repayments from the government. Since you're stressing the percentage of their legal bills that were repaid, here's a figure you could bring up as well: $834,000 is 23% of $3,580,000, which is the amount the Clintons are requesting from the government. The Clintons may be only getting 2% of what they asked for, but they're asking for more than four times the amount of money that was distributed to Reagan and Bush. Perhaps that has a lot more to do with the denial of their request than any shadowy political conspiracy.

Teach your children well...
I was reading Best of the Web for today, and some twit junior college instructor thought it would be a good idea to have his students send emails to elected officials containing the words "kill the president"...

Michael Ballou, a part-time lecturer who teaches an "Introduction to U.S. Government" course at the college's Petaluma campus, intended the assignment to be an "experiential exercise that would instill a sense of fear so they would have a better sense of why more people don't participate in the political process," said Doug Garrison, the vice president and executive dean of the Petaluma campus. ...

It is appropriate to fear participation in the political process, if your participation is limited to making death threats against the president. That isn't the reason 'more people don't participate in the political process', and saying that just makes Garrison look like a dumbass. Does he think that a good 'experiential exercise' that would instill a better understanding of why women don't like to walk alone at night would be to rape his students?

Most of the 30 students in the class dismissed the June 25 assignment as a joke, but after it was repeated at a subsequent class, one student did send the e-mail to U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Napa Valley) on July 5. ...
Making a threat against the president is against the law and subject to up to five years in prison.

People like this are why I would never teach my (hypothetical) children to blindly obey their superiors.

Getting closer to justice...
A jury took less than an hour to declare Chante Mallard guilty of murder. Now all they have to do is run her down in the parking lot and leave her on the windshield to die for justice to be served. Barring that, with any luck she'll spend the rest of her life in prison.

Freudian Slip?
I was scrolling through the latest national news from the AP on the Washington Post's site, and noticed the following:

U.S. Wary About Mideast Truce Reports (AP, June 25, 2003; 1:20 PM)

Dorel Recalls 1.2M Infant Safety Seats (AP, June 25, 2003; 1:19 PM)

Jurist Fights to Save Everglades Legacy (AP, June 25, 2003; 1:19 PM)

Virginia Grower Earning a Hot Reputation (AP, June 25, 2003; 1:14 PM)

N.M. Wildfire Burns Through 700 Acres (AP, June 25, 2003; 1:13 PM)

U.S. Weary About Mideast Truce Reports (AP, June 25, 2003; 1:18 PM)

Given the twisty kitten's ball of yarn that the "Road Map" has been, I personally thought the earlier headline was more accurate.

Maybe we should make the punishment fit the crime...
Chante Mallard is scheduled to go on trial today, charged with murder and tampering with evidence.

Mallard told police that her Chevrolet Cavalier hit Biggs with such force that his head and shoulders jammed into the windshield and his legs were bent over the roof, his pants tearing almost completely off his body.

Instead of stopping, police say, Mallard drove about a mile down a divided six-lane highway, the man still lodged and bleeding in the jagged windshield, then continued through town to her small yellow house in a working-class neighborhood.

She pulled into her garage, lowered the door, then sat in the car and cried, repeatedly apologizing to the man who was moaning, she later told detectives.

"Chante kept going in and out of the garage telling the man she was sorry," the police report states. "She does not know how long it took the man to die; she quit going out into the garage."

At some point after Chante quit apologizing, Gregory Biggs died from the injuries she inflicted, and then she and two accomplices dumped the body.

Her lawyers say this was merely a bad decision on her part, and that because she was distraught, she should only be punished for failing to stop and render aid.

... Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani later said Biggs, whose left leg was nearly amputated, probably lived only a few hours after he was hit the morning of Oct. 26, 2001. He could have survived if he had received medical attention, Peerwani has said.

That is far more than merely failing to 'stop and render aid.' I can't think of any punishment currently in use in the american justice system that is harsh enough to address such a complete lack of humanity. I'm of the opinion that the only way to make this one right, is to have someone do unto Chante what she so callously did to Gregory Biggs.

A Good Anti-Drug Commercial
FreeVibe has actually put out an anti-drug commercial that I think is effective.

The spot opens with a younger teen picking up his older brother's wallet and talking to the camera. As he goes downstairs he says something like, "My brother started smoking pot when he was younger than I am. He didn't get arrested. He didn't turn to harder drugs. He didn't drop out of school." Kid enters a smoky basement to toss the wallet to his red-eyed, stubble-faced, much older, stoner brother sitting on the couch watching TV, and finishes his statement with, "He never really did anything. At all."

And that, in my experience, is the real danger in marijuana.

That was a trustworthy diagnosis...

Michael T. Crane, a convicted sex offender whose case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, has been arrested again, and charged with comitting another rape after his release from custody.

Crane was convicted in 1994 in Johnson County, Kan., for an attack on a video store clerk in suburban Leawood the previous year. Earlier, he got probation in 1987 for attempted forcible rape and two counts of sex abuse in Missouri.

In the 1994 case, he was sentenced to 35 years to life on his convictions for kidnapping, attempted rape and attempted sodomy. ...

As he was approaching release, the state sought to have him kept in confinement, and a jury determined him to be a violent sexual predator. The Kansas Supreme Court overturned that finding, but Crane remained in confinement while the state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last year, the court ruled in a 7-2 decision that states must prove that convicted sex offenders can't control themselves if they are to be confined after they finish their prison terms. ...

Crane, who remained in custody for more than three years after finishing his sentence, was released in January last year after doctors concluded his mental condition had changed and that he was no longer a threat.

Sounds to me like Crane simply started saying what the doctors wanted to hear. They decided this predatory animal was safe enough to be released into the wild, and sure enough, he went right back to his raping ways.

I'm sure its a great comfort to his latest victim, to hear that a team of doctors decided he was safe now.

The Kansas law, similar to those in about 20 states, allows indefinite confinement of violent sex offenders beyond their prison term if they suffer from mental abnormalities making them likely to commit similar crimes in the future. (emphasis mine)

Isn't it a given that a rapist is mentally abnormal? And considering this was not his first offense, I'd say it's also a given that he's likely to commit similar crimes in the future. This animal should never have been released.

Ewwwwwwww
From the Associated Press:

PALOMINO VALLEY, Nev. - Swarms of Mormon crickets are marching across the West, destroying rangeland and crops, slickening highways with their carcasses and leaving disgusted residents in their wake.

"It's yucky," said Amy Nisbet of Elko in northeast Nevada, where this year crickets made their first appearance in recent memory. "You drive down the street and they pop like bubble wrap."

DVDs I own - I
Prayer of the Rollerboys - figure I'd better admit this one up front. Futuristic movie set in the United States - what's left of it after foreign companies have bought it all - about a group of rollerblading drug-dealing aryan nation wannabes in trench coats. Starring Corey Haim and Patricia Arquette. Bought it off of the super-off-brand-marked-down-budget DVDs rack at Best Buy after seeing a late showing of it on cable one night. It's awful, but somehow irresistable to me. Guess I have really bad taste...

The Slipper and the Rose - best telling of the Cinderella story I've ever seen. Excellent dialogue, costumes, and I fell in love with the musical numbers the first time I saw it... when I was around 8 years old. Really good changes from the basic story line - Cinderella actually refuses to marry her beloved Prince for the good of the country. And, of value to parents who might like intelligent scripts, but dislike exposing their children to suggestive content - I can't think of a single objectionable thing in the entire movie.

Meet the Feebles - however, is not for kids. Or the weak of stomach. Or the easily offended. If you're interested in seeing the sort of work Peter Jackson was producing before he directed Lord of the Rings, and have a taste for demented movies, this is for you. It's probably the only movie you'll ever see where a walrus has sex with a cat. It's been widely described as "the Muppets on acid." Lower kill count than in Dead Alive, but I'd be hard pressed to decide which movie is grosser.

So no more underage girls... what about unwilling relatives?
The Associated Press reports that David Kingston, imprisoned for felony incest, and unlawful sexual contact with a minor, has been released from prison. Not paroled - released.

The state parole board's decision to release David Ortell Kingston on Tuesday rather than parole him means the prison has no responsibility to follow up on him.

Todd Utzinger, one of Kingston's former attorneys, said the parole board's decision recognizes "he has taken full responsibility and is prepared to go on and live a crime-free life." ...

Kingston's 16-year-old wife was the daughter of his brother John Daniel Kingston, who was sentenced to seven months in jail for beating the girl after she attempted to flee the marriage. Another Kingston brother, Paul, is the church leader.

David Kingston had denied having had sex with his niece until a parole hearing last August. He vowed never again to have sex with an underage girl.

"I recognize the hurt and sorrow I have caused (the victim) and my family," he said.

Great. So Mr. Kingston has vowed to wait until they're 18 years old now. I'd be more reassured if he also vowed not to force his female relatives to marry him any more.

Like a dog returns to its vomit...
This is the sort of news that makes me dislike domestic violence groups:

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Even though she had an order of protection filed against her ex-husband, Betty Lucas invited him to a birthday party for one of their children.

The party soon disintegrated into fighting and police were called. But in an unexpected twist, both adults were charged with violating the protection order - her ex-husband for attending and Lucas for inviting him.

Now Lucas' appeal has landed on the docket of the Ohio Supreme Court, which must decide if people who seek a court's protection can be charged with violating their own request.

Seems fair enough to me. If you get a protective order against a guy, you're hardly deserving of sympathy if you invite him to violate it.

Domestic violence groups have sided with Lucas and say abusive people - not their victims - must be held responsible for violating protective orders. Prosecutors say Lucas should be held as accountable as anyone else who helped her husband violate a court order.

Because poor abused women should never have to take responsibility or face consequences for their actions.

Several domestic violence watchdog groups are backing Betty Lucas, saying failure to overturn her conviction sets back the justice system's role in protecting victims of abuse.

"Punishing the victim for contacting or returning to the offender does nothing to deter criminal behavior," the groups, including the Action Ohio Coalition for Battered Women and the Ohio Domestic Violence Network, argued in court papers.

Whups... I was being sarcastic, up there, but it appears that the AOCBW wasn't.

"It tells the victim that she is equally responsible for the abuser's violent behavior and it reinforces the abuser's belief that his behavior is the result of factors outside his control," the groups argued.

Well yes, if you deliberately violate a court order, in order to see a man that you claim is abusive, you share the responsibility for the results. I'm of the opinion that protective orders should be worded so that they apply equally to each party. If the police aren't allowed to charge you with violating protective orders you request, there's nothing to stop me from getting a protective order against an ex-boyfriend and then violating it, calling the police, and having him carted off to jail. Once he gets out, if the order is still in effect, I can repeat the process as many times as I like. Sounds unfair? It is. If you think someone is so dangerous to you that you have to get a protective order, then you have a responsibility to stay the hell away from them.

Lucas' attorney, Andrew Sanderson, argued that Ohio law is meant to protect victims of domestic violence even if they make a bad decision about the person who abused them.

He used the analogy of Ohio's sexual assault laws, which protect victims under 18 from prosecution no matter the circumstances. Even if a teenage girl was a seducer, "We've made a societal decision that we're not going to charge that individual," Sanderson said.

There's a difference there in that children under the age of consent are held to be incapable of making their own decisions - that's why its called below the age of consent. Is Sanderson implying that women are incapable of making their own decisions, and therefore shouldn't be held responsible even when they recklessly expose themselves to a known danger? How condescending.

This just in: Food Is Addictive
Withdrawal symptoms can be fatal!

That bastion of self-reliance and personal responsibility, John Banzhaf is at it again. Now, he's warning restaurants that they'd better start putting up warnings that food can be addictive, or face possible lawsuits.

As you and your members might already know, several courts have held that cigarette manufacturers may be liable for failing to disclose that their products might be addictive, even though the general health dangers of smoking were so well known as to be regarded as common knowledge. ... By analogy, even if all courts find that the general dangers of eating fatty and calorie-rich foods at fast food restaurants are likewise common knowledge, liability for causing obesity and its related diseases may nevertheless be premised on the theory that the public is much less aware of the addictive-like effects of many fast food than they are of the widely-publicized addictive nature of nicotine in cigarettes.

In light of these scientific studies, it may also be prudent for fast food companies to review their policies to be sure that nothing they are doing could be construed by a jury as seeking to take advantage of and/or enhance the possibly addictive properties of their foods. Changing the cooking temperature so as to increase the amount of fat absorbed during cooking, adding sugar to foods like french fries where it is not ordinarily expected, etc. might well seem to jurors like the activities of cigarette manufacturers to increase (“spike”) the addictive effects of their products.

And he's right, you know. Food is addictive. People have to eat food, or their withdrawal symptoms - stomach cramps, wasting, headaches, mood swings, and malnutrition - will eventually grow so severe as to be fatal.

I am a food addict who has several times tried to kick the habit, but my withdrawal symptoms became so bad, that I finally broke down and started eating again. I was experiencing severe stomach cramps (which some people mistakenly called hunger pangs), and such severe wasting that my weight dropped from 120lbs all the way down to 105lbs before I lost the struggle, fell off the wagon, and started eating once again. My struggle with my food addiction has lasted for a painful twenty-seven years now, and I know I am not the only sufferer. I estimate the possible food-addiction rate among U.S. residents could be as high as 100%! This a health crisis that has gone unaddressed for far too long, and I call on congress to add 'food' to the list of controlled substances, for the sake and safety of current and potential food addicts everywhere.

Dream Vacation
I just spent Memorial Day weekend at the Seven Foxes in Lake Toxaway, North Carolina. This was the first time I ever tried renting a cabin for a vacation before, and it was absolutely an ideal experience. Lake Toxaway is a gorgeous area, with mountain laurel all over the place, and some really beautiful parks and waterfalls. The cabin at the Seven Foxes was adorable, comfortable, clean and well stocked, and I don't think I've had better sleep in years. I felt so good at the end of the weekend, I didn't even mind the thought of going back to work... until we left the mountains and my allergies came back.

Keep saying it until people start to listen
Wendy McElroy has an excellent editorial on FoxNews.com called "Cut Men: Do They Not Bleed?" that I think bears repeated reading.

It cannot be overstated: Most men are good, hard-working human beings who love their families and never raise a hand in violence. Because their decency is not sensational, they are ignored by media and politicians who focus instead on men who rape or otherwise give their gender a bad name. A better reaction is to hold the decent men closer to us and value them more.

The vast majority of men I know are upstanding, honorable, decent people who believe in doing the right thing. As a woman who likes being one, a world without men in it, or a world where men have been turned into timid, flaccid, stubbly versions of women, is truly awful to contemplate. Three cheers for men!

Eminent Domain, by any other name, is still Stealing
The Associated Press carried an article today titled "Cities Seize Private Land for Development". It's important reading for homeowners, and anyone else who believes in the rule of law and respect for property rights.

The first time the city of New London, Conn., seized Pasquale Cristofaro's home, it was to make way for a sea wall that never materialized. Instead, private medical offices sprouted over the backyard plot where Cristofaro once grew tomatoes, squash and grapes.

Three decades later, when the city wanted to raze another Cristofaro family home to clear the way for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices, the 77-year-old Italian immigrant dug in and fought back in court.

"When they came to take my house from me a second time, I feel sick," said Cristofaro, whose grandchildren now live in the home he bought in 1972. "It's not right, to take it for a business. The United States of America is supposed to stop this."

Bitter disputes are playing out across the country as city leaders eager to improve their economies condemn homes and small businesses - not for highways, airports or other public projects, but for private development.

This is not a new problem, but one that finally appears to be gaining some well-deserved attention. The Institute for Justice recently published a report documenting eminent domain abuses, which can be found here on their website. James Bovard has been writing books exposing eminent domain and asset forfeiture abuses for years. Yes, just about anyone's land could be more valuable to the state if it were in the hands of a private business, but that doesn't make stealing it from the rightful owner right. Not unless you're living in a communist country.

A more lighthearted, but no less effective look at the unfairness of private property seizures can be found in the movie, The Castle. It's suitable for anyone, gently amusing, and really drives the point home.

It's good for He, but not for Thee...
Just as it would leave a bad taste in my mouth to hear a member of the ADL call for racial profiling of blacks, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to hear someone simultaneously defend one perversion while condemning another. I normally respect James Taranto of Best of the Web, but yesterday's top post, titled "Look for the Union Label" just pisses me off. Mr. Taranto is okay with gay marriage, but nearly goes into hysterics in his attacks on polygamy

Echoing Santorum, Kurtz raises the possibility of a "slippery slope" leading from same-sex marriage to polygamy. But one can easily draw a distinction. The widespread practice of polygamy would have great social costs. It would distort the sexual marketplace by creating an undersupply of marriageable women. (Polyandry, the practice of women having multiple husbands, is too rare to be worth discussing.) The result is the creation of what Jonathan Rauch calls a "sexual underclass" of "low-status men" whose prospects for marriage are virtually nil.

First, the practice would have to be wide-spread in order for it to have any sort of the affect on the 'sexual marketplace' - which, by the way, is an awful term for love relationships. Second, what makes you think that women the United States over would be clamoring for a slot as 8th wife?

What has fueled the issue of polygamy statewide as well as nationally is the case of a 16-year-old girl who stumbled into a remote gas station in northern Utah this summer.

This summer? The case actually happened in May of 1998, by my math a good five years ago. Not that the actual date counts so much except that its sloppy reporting.

Covered with fresh bruises on her legs, arms and buttocks, authorities said the girl had run seven miles through the night, fleeing her father's belt and the future he had ordained for her: marriage to her uncle, and life as his 15th wife.

The teen-ager's 911 call has resulted in a charge against her father, John Daniel Kingston, a leader of a wealthy but secretive polygamous clan based in a Salt Lake suburb. Rowenna Erickson, a Tapestry member who left the clan in 1991, said that incest, child marriage and birth defects were becoming more frequent in the clan, which numbers about 1,500 people. . . .

Ms. Erickson said that John Daniel Kingston had fathered 10 children with a half-sister and that the 16-year-old girl who fled was his eldest child. Identified only by her initials, M.N., she testified in late July in court here that last fall she had been secretly married against her will to an uncle, David Kingston.

It's easy to understand why polygamy would lead to child abuse and incest, especially in relatively small communities. If the supply of marriageable women is severely restricted because a large number of women are married to a small number of men, then it's not surprising that men would turn their attention to underage girls.

Say What?? If you're going to make that argument, then perhaps you should present data that actually shows something like that going on. Instead, you paint a story of a male patriarch abusing his power to force a non-consenting child to marry a man who already had 14 wives. This is like me claiming that single men are more likely to rape and kill pregnant women, and using the Laci Peterson case as my evidence.

As for incest, the practice of polygamy creates huge numbers of close relatives. The Times cites the example of the late Wilford Woodruff Steed of Colorado City, Colo., who when he died in 1994 left six wives, 43 children and 235 grandchildren. In 1990 Colorado City had a population of 2,426, which means that those 235 grandchildren--all of whom are either siblings, half-siblings or first cousins--were nearly 10% of the town's population, and a higher proportion of their peers.

I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a bad thing, unless there's a local ordinance prohibiting marriage to anyone outside of the town. They aren't living in Antarctica, and it doesn't take a seven day trip by mule-drawn buggy to get to the nearest settlement. So there are a lot of relatives around.... bet that means the women in the town hardly ever have trouble finding a trusted babysitter.

But Taranto isn't one of those "marriage means one man, one woman!!!" freaks...

By contrast, it's hard to imagine any great social harm arising from official recognition of same-sex unions. Just about anyone who would consider "marrying" someone of the same sex is outside the ordinary marriage pool anyway; for the vast majority of heterosexuals, the idea of a same-sex union is entirely (if you'll pardon the expression) unnatural.

Since when did affirmative action come to sexual relationships? And does that mean that if the population ratio swung to 75% female, you'd change your mind?

Homosexuality, polygamy and incest all carry societal risks. Anal sex brings with it a greater risk of disease transmission. Polygamy brings an increased risk of close-interbreeding and forced marriages (although I'm of the opinion that a lot of these problems would be mitigated were polygamists not forced underground.) Incest brings with it an increased risk of reinforced bad recessives and birth defects. It pisses me off to hear people claim that while anal sex and gay marriage should be legal, polygamy should not. Likewise, I find it irksome to hear polygamous groups rant about the unnaturalness of homosexuality. Wether its the Beehive or a gay bathhouse, you're all on the fringe. Instead of clamoring for special treatment for your kink, while arguing against equal protection for others', it seems to me you'd accomplish a lot more if you argued that consenting adults should be able to enter into whatever relationship they please.

Whichever way the Supreme Court rules, I'm fine with it. My kinks are legal. I just think that perhaps homosexuals would have firmer ground to stand on if they didn't react to other fringe groups the way a southern Baptist would to them.

Always good advice
Clayton has an excellent series of posts on How to Become Wealthy (scroll up for parts 2 and 3). All of it is advice that is obvious to me, now, but I sure wish someone had told it to me back when I first moved out of my parents' house, and got four credit cards. There is one point he makes that hadn't occurred to me so far, that especially bears repeating:

You must find out where you are spending your money, and either reduce spending, or increase income. ...however, remember this: an extra dollar earned, because of federal, state, and Social Security taxes, is typically $0.55 to $0.65 more in your pocket. A dollar reduction in spending, however is $1 towards solving your budget problem.

The entire series is smart advice, and recommended reading for anyone who isn't already rich.

What's so wrong with comparing homosexuality to polygamy?
All sorts of people have their panties in a twist over the Santorum interview, where he infamously stated:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) 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," Santorum said in the interview, published Monday.

So far, of the posts I've seen regarding the issue, my favorite has to come from Rand Simberg. He writes, in part:

Now it's clear from context and his history that he thinks that not only is there something wrong with all of those things, but that he also thinks that they should be therefore illegal, and that not allowing laws against consensual gay sex shoves us down the hill on a slick road to perdition. That's not a position with which I agree, but I don't see any comparison of that to wistfully dreaming of a return to Jim Crow. I assume that, to the degree that the objectors have a sincere objection (disregarding the simple political and partisan opportunity), it is his lumping homosexuality in with the other things, unless they're proposing to make them all legal as well (no doubt some of them might).

To me, that's the most interesting thing about this case. I wrote in his comments section (I've only added html tags here):

"Santorum does indeed appear to be against any non-procreative heterosexual sex. That's fine with me, since he won't be the one deciding wether or not states can make other sex illegal - that'll be the Sup Ct.
What bothers me is the outrage everyone is expressing because Santorum compared homosexuality to incest, adultery, bigamy, etc... The impression I'm getting here is that the folks upset with Santorum are upset because he lumped homosexuality into activities these people think are wrong. In other words, their tolerance for homosexuality does not extend to tolerance for polygamy or other alternative relationships. If so, why not? Polygamy in particular has a far longer history of social acceptance (at least in other cultures/religions) than homosexuality has had.
Incest - I understand the genetic concerns incest raises, but defective babies are not created only by sister/brother or mother/son pairings. If the prohibition against blood-related consensual adults having sex is only due to the risk of birth defects, why have we not also made it illegal for people who know they will have defective children to breed? And if no offspring results from the pairing, why is it wrong? (Before anyone jumps on my case for that - I don't think its the governments' business to decide who has babies and who doesn't...smacks too much of nazism to me.)
I disagree with Santorum's stance, but I agree with his statement. If the Sup Ct rules, based on the 'right to privacy', that the states cannot make laws prohibiting homosexual sex, then they shouldn't make laws prohibiting other sexual relationships between consenting adults."

I'm tempted to say that those folks upset over Santorum's comments - because he compared homosexuals to bigamists, polygamists, etc - are no more tolerant than he is.