PENNSYLVANIA
The Sentinel
By Rich Lewis, July 14, 2005
Hide your children and your dogs.
I'm from Boston.
Boo.
OK, so I've lived in Carlisle for the past 25 years. And I'm not exactly from Boston, but one of its grubby suburbs.
But I did inhale Boston air for 22 years, went to a Catholic high school in Boston, and then to college in the next town over.
So I am undoubtedly incurably infected by the morality-degrading virus that makes the capital of Massachusetts unsafe for decent Americans.
At least Rick Santorum thinks so.
As you may have heard, the junior senator from Pennsylvania is under fire this week for refusing to repudiate comments he made a few years ago blaming the "liberalism" of Boston for the pedophile scandal there involving Catholic priests.
"It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm," Santorum wrote in July 2002.
We now know the abuse was a national problem and involved cities from Philadelphia to Louisville to Tucson to Los Angeles. It just happened to blow up first in Boston.
So you'd think Santorum would have reconsidered his attack on that city.
But no.
On Tuesday, Santorum told Boston Globe reporter Susan Milligan that he stood by his original comments. He pointed to the city's "sexual license" and "sexual freedom" and concluded: "If you have a world view that I'm describing (about Boston) ... that affirms alternative views of sexuality, that can lead to a lot of people taking it the wrong way."
So, Boston's Catholic priests saw all those college students making out on the banks of the Charles River and thought to themselves, "Yahoo, this means we can fondle the altar boys"?
Do you really believe that?