Politics: Orrin to Rick: Step off the Polygamists

Thanks to the Congressional Quarterly's mid-day update, I can bring you the comments of Senator Orrin Hatch, who, the Salt Lake Tribune helpfully points out, "didn't compare talking points" with Senator Rick Santorum before leaving for their spring recess (completed today).

Hatch, you see, has been called "peculiarly tolerant" of polygamists in the Beehive State, even though the practice is outlawed, even within the Mormon religion.

In a chat with constituents on April 18th, Hatch stepped into a bizarre conflict with Mr. Santorum. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

In a response applauded by polygamous leaders and blasted by anti-polygamy activists, Hatch responded: "I'm not here to justify polygamy. All I can say is, I know people in Hildale who are polygamists who are very fine people. You come and show me of evidence of children being abused there and I'll get involved."
A few days later in an interview with The Associated Press, Santorum used polygamy as an example of the kind of "deviant" sexual behavior that would be legalized if a Texas statute prohibiting consensual homosexual sex is ruled unconstitutional in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual [homosexual] 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 do anything," said Santorum.

Later in the same item, the Tribune's Christopher Smith completes the one-two matching Hatch's "blind spot" to an excellent example from a polygamy-opponent (LDS=Latter Day Saints, a common term for the Mormon faith):

Having Hatch, a member of the LDS Church, intimate that many Utah polygamists are upstanding citizens while his GOP colleague Santorum categorizes polygamy as one of the sexual practices that "undermines the basic tenets of our society and the family" reinforces perceptions that some Utah politicians have a moral blind spot.
"All the time you hear Mormon politicians like Orrin Hatch and [Gov.] Mike Leavitt say if it wasn't for polygamy, they wouldn't be here because their ancestors were polygamists," said Tapestry Against Polygamy co-founder Rowenna Erickson, who lived in the Kingston polygamous clan for 34 years before becoming one of Utah's leading contemporary voices against the practice. "Well, if you were conceived out of rape would you go around condoning rape? My hair is still standing on end over what Orrin Hatch said. He's totally ignorant of what goes on in polygamy."

I don't even think I need to say anything else.