A candidate who’s finally ready to tell the emperor he has no clothes on?

“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….Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. 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.”
~ Presidential candidate Rick Santorum

By:Paul Murano – January, 2012

The statement above by Rick Santorum will earn him the ridicule and scorn of the media, the press, the general public, and even most Christians. He will be accused of all the usual things, from being out of touch, stupid, from another era, a puritan, etc., etc. As a result he will not be taken seriously as a candidate. The problem is he is right. The second problem is that there is a dearth of people who understand this, and less who have the courage to communicate it.

There is a simple reason why most people will consider what I just stated as nutty. Often when someone is addicted to a drug he cannot admit it because he is not aware of it. He is so conditioned by, and dependent on, the lifestyle it brings him that he assumes his experience of reality is normal and that there is no viable alternative.

The same can be said about a society. We as a people are in the midst of the greatest drug dependence ever experienced, and it continues to skew our vision, breakdown our families, and destroy our lives in ways that we are not even aware of. That drug is the birth control pill.

Since the 1970’s this pill has reshaped the economy, the family, and our cultural standards so much as to condition a people to believe things that common sense would quickly reject when sober.

This drug-dependence leads us to believe that large families are wrong, that premarital relationships must be sexual, that women must have careers, look sexy, and give in to men in order to have self worth; that pregnancy can be a “mistake” that is corrected by abortion, that marriage can be a mistake corrected by divorce, and that limiting marriage to a man and woman has been a mistake universally for four thousand years.

A new (politically correct) language has arisen and a new reality has been shaped in our minds because of this drug. Like its purpose, it creates a mentality that separates sex from procreation, love from life, and as a result all “sexual expression” and subsequent lifestyles become rationalized and legitimized. If you don’t buy into this skewed vision you are a labeled a bigot.

Rick Santorum will be called a Catholic bigot, even though the Church simply recognizes the natural law that all non-Catholics with open minds recognize, like Ghandi who condemned contraception with no uncertain terms.

Rick Santorum possesses an insight that even most people on the religious right do not have – that the culture of death weakening this nation at its core has its root and foundation in contraception. None of the ills of society that rest upon it – including abortion, divorce, and the population implosion now threatening the western world – will ever wane until contraception is condemned. And that will never occur until many more like Santorum stand up and take the heat for challenging society’s major addiction. Like anyone who is drug-dependent, if the message is communicated with consistency and love eventually the lashing out and ridicule of the masses will give way to resignation, repentance, and sobriety. But again, this would take courage from many more individuals like Santorum willing to take the inevitable heat.

If you want a presidential candidate that probably has the best shot at beating Barack Obama, vote for Mitt Romney. If you want someone who will articulately expose Obama and his agenda for what it really is but has less chance of winning, vote for Newt Gingrich. But if you want someone that has the insight of a Gingrich and the potential electability of a Romney, it is time to consider Rick Santorum as your candidate. But regardless of who occupies the White House, you are the most important person to influence your world. Keep planting seeds.

Paul Murano teaches philosophy at North Shore Community College and theology at the College of Saint Mary Magdalen. He is host of Beneath the Surface television show at Burlington Cable Access TV and is co-host of the Paying Attention Radio program. Paul is also chairman of Heartbeat Pregnancy Help center in Burlington and is a singer/songwriter/musician.