Santorum Says He Does ‘Not Approve’ Of Teaching History Of Gay Americans In California Schools

By Lee Fang

A bill moving through the California legislature compels the state to add gay history to the state education curriculum. Predictably, just as the addition of African American history and civil rights history to California school textbooks stirred right-wing hatred during the 1960′s, conservatives are railing against the effort. As the Associated Press notes, “California law already requires schools to teach about women, African Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians and labor.”

On Friday, ThinkProgress caught up with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) at the South Carolina Silver Elephant Dinner, where he had just finished his keynote address. Santorum said he was “not surprised” by the California bill, which he said is a “logical consequence” of court decisions “creating rights.” Presumably, Santorum is referring to the multiple court decisions affirming the right of gay marriage in California. In any case, Santorum said he “certainly would not approve” of teaching gay history:

FANG: I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but California is adopting in their state curriculum for public education a required teaching of the gay rights movement. Are you troubled by that at all? I know you’ve written and talked about this issue of education.
SANTORUM: Well what I talked about is that there are consequences of the court’s actions and I think the court, by ruling the way they did, has created a precedent that states now have to follow, and some states are going farther others. I certainly would not approve of that, but there’s a logical consequence to the courts injecting themselves in creating rights and people attaching their legislative ideas to those rights that in some respects could logically flow from that. So I’m not surprised.

Watch it:

Brandishing his anti-gay social conservative values, Santorum would like schools to censor the contributions of gay American scholars, inventors, and activists. Perhaps he would like to bury the fact that even his own campaign slogan, “Fighting to make America America again,” is borrowed from the gay Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.