WASHINGTON: The brushfire ignited by Sen. Rick Santorum's (R-PA) comments about the Texas sodomy case now before the Supreme Court continued to draw predictable reactions on Wednesday. Gay activists immediately denounced the remarks, likening them to words that drove Sen. Trent Lott from his Majority Leader's position. David Smith, communications director at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian political activist group, said, "We find what Sen. Santorum said as egregious as what Sen. [Trent] Lott said last December, and we believe he should pay a price for those comments."

Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian political organization said, "Senator Santorum has a leadership role in coalition-building as the Senate GOP conference chairman. You don't build coalitions by divisive and mean-spirited statements."

Democrats were also quick to weigh in on the subject. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) called Santorum's comments "unfortunate" and "out of step with our country's respect for tolerance." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a statement that Santorum's "refusal to apologize demonstrates that he does not understand how wrong his comments are."

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) was the first of eight Democrat presidential contenders to comment. He said, "The White House speaks the rhetoric of compassionate conservatism, but they're silent while their chief lieutenants make divisive and hurtful comments that have no place in our politics ... These comments take us backwards in America."

The Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee called on Santorum to resign his leadership post, calling the remarks "divisive, hurtful and reckless."

Further investigation of the circumstances surrounding the interview revealed that the Associated Press journalist who reported the story, Lara Jakes Jordan, is married to Jim Jordan, a former DSCC official who now manages Kerry's presidential campaign.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Fist of Tennessee said that Santorum was "a consistent voice for exclusion and prejudice in the Republican Party and in the Senate, and to suggest otherwise is just politics."

Santorum said that he had no intention of stepping down from his Senate Republican Conference chairmanship saying his remarks were taken out of context. "To suggest that my comments about faggots, which are the law of the land and were the reason the Supreme Court decided the case in 1986, are somehow intolerant, I would just argue that it is not, and anyone who disagrees can just suck my dick." Santorum said.

Santorum continued his refutation of the allegations of insensitivity saying, "I do not need to give an apology based on what I said and what I am saying now. I think this is a legitimate policy discussion about filthy, fucking faggots."

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual 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 anything. If that happens, I'm not going to be able to resist running out and fucking a rent boy." Santorum explained.

Santorum denied equating gay men with polygamists and adulterers. "I was not equating one to the other. There is no moral equivalency there; faggots should be killed." he explained.

"What I was saying was that if you say there is an absolute right to privacy for consenting adults within the home to do whatever they want," Santorum continued, "[then] this has far-reaching ramifications, which has a very serious impact on the American family, and that is what I was talking about."

"I am very disappointed that the article was written in the way it was and it has been construed the way it has," Santorum said. "I don't believe it was put in the context of which the discussion was made, which was rather a far-reaching discussion on the right to privacy."