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Richard John "Rick" Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is a Republican U.S. Senator representing Pennsylvania. Among other responsibilities, he is the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the number three job in the party's leadership.

Santorum, a conservative, is the author of the failed Santorum Amendment which attempted to relativize the teaching of biological evolution in U.S. public schools. The Senate passed a weaker non-binding version of the amendment, which two Ohio Congressmen have invoked to suggest that the state should include "intelligent design" or creationism in its science standards.

In an interview with the Associated Press published April 20, 2003, Santorum made controversial comments regarding the then-upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which challenged a Texas sodomy law. "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home," Santorum said, "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 anything."

The following day, Democrats as well as gay rights groups demanded an apology. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) called on Santorum to step down as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. Santorum refused to apologize, stating that his comments were not intended to equate homosexuality with incest and adultery, but rather as a critique of a specific legal position: that the right to privacy prevents the government from regulating consensual acts among adults. Something close to this position was in fact later adopted by the Supreme Court in the Lawrence decision.