Rick Santorum - Allied with a LGBT Group?

In both a little noticed article on conservative website Redstate.com, as well as one sentence in a POLITICO analysis of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's lobbying work, reporters have discovered an interesting fact: one of the organizations which Senator Santorum has served with operates a clinic for LGBT people in Minnesota. As uncovered by Erick Erickson at Redstate.com, 

Universal Health Services, on whose board he sat until he left in June of this year, runs a PRIDE Institute in Minnesota. It’s the “nation’s first and leading provider of mental health service to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community.”

Ironically, given Santorum’s strong comments on “homosexual acts,” according to the PRIDE Institute, its exclusive focus on the gay community is necessary because “the society in which we live marginalizes the LGBT community” with “negative covert and overt messages about the gay and lesbian lifestyle.”

In fact, the PRIDE Institute brands the kind of language Santorum used “heterorsexism.”

As Erickson further notes, it seems as though Santorum's 'values' are readily sacrificed on the alter of the almighty dollar. I wonder what his social conservative base in Iowa ( and other states to come), will think about his long participation in an organization which actively promotes the "homosexual lifestyle". 


Now, some defenders of Senator Santorum may whitewash his participation in this corporation, and assert that he resigned because of the direction that the company was going (aka. funding LGBT Institutes and pro-choice hospitals). Yet the facts would not support such a position. In a press release regarding Senator Santorum's departure from the organization in June, the CEO of Universal Health Services Alan B. Miller, stated that the reason why Senator Santorum left the company was because of his announced candidacy for President, 

"We appreciate Senator Santorum's service on our Board of Directors and he has been a valuable asset to our Company...We certainly understood that should Senator Santorum formally announce and initiate his campaign for President, it would result in his departure from the Board given the substantial focus and effort required to achieve that goal. However, Rick's guidance and stewardship will be sorely missed."

If Santorum does well in Iowa, I predict that things will get very interesting with him, very fast.