Boston ? As a certified flap watcher, I will look back on the Rick Santorum controversy as the cormorant of its species. It took an enormous amount of energy to achieve a modest liftoff and then it flopped unceremoniously back into the political ocean.

The flapping began after the Pennsylvania senator offered his comments on the Texas sodomy case: “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.”

This brought outrage from usual and unusual suspects. The Log Cabin Republicans — the masochistic wing of the gay movement — protested that he was tarnishing homosexuals. Owen Allred, the leader of a breakaway Mormon sect, protested that he was tarnishing polygamists.

Meanwhile, the White House kept its lip zipped except to say that the senator — often described as the original compassionate conservative — was “an inclusive man.”

When the air calmed, many wondered why nostalgia for segregation had taken down the No. 1 Republican senator, Trent Lott, while gay trashing had left the No. 3 Republican unharmed. But, all in all, this was less of a flap about homosexuality than about theocracy.

Santorum opened another front in the ongoing internecine struggle between what may be described as the Shiite and the Sunni wings of the Republican Party. Or, if you prefer, between Taliban Republicans and Suburban Republicans.

Let’s go back to our friend Santorum. Last year, he told a Catholic newspaper that JFK’s vow to separate his faith from his politics was wrong and has caused “much harm in America.” Judie Brown of the American Life League said approvingly: “Senator Santorum is a very good example of the Catholic who practices his faith 24 hours a day. He does not leave it at home when he goes to the office.”

This may have a nice holistic ring to it, until you remember that this government was founded on a separation of church and state. And the line has gotten increasingly fuzzy under Bush II.

It’s not just prayer meetings in the attorney general’s office. It’s not just abstinence-only education and the rather hubristic assertion that God is on our side in battle. It’s on the home front too.

A couple of weeks ago there was a flap that didn’t even reach the Santorum altitude. In an article in a Baptist paper titled “America’s Education Evangelist,” Rod Paige, the secretary of (public) education, expressed his preference for college education. “All things being equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school where there’s a strong appreciation for values, the kind of values that I think are associated with the Christian communities.” What would he say to those who disagree with him? “I would offer them my prayers.”

I know this is what’s called “playing to the base.” But the base is awfully basic. Even, um, fundamentalist.

Remember what Jerry Falwell said after 9-11? “I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians … all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘you helped this happen.'” Pat Robertson nodded his head in agreement.

Now fast forward to the list of people who have been nominated to the theocracy, excuse me, the judiciary. Among those who are dubbed relatively moderate is Bill Pryor, the current Alabama attorney general, nominated to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Pryor not only worked with Robertson to defend student-led prayer in school, he also defended a judge who displayed the Ten Commandments in his courthouse. At a public rally he said, “God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians … to save our country and save our courts.”

The same Pryor wrote an amicus brief in the Texas sodomy case that might have been dictated by Santorum, except for Pryor’s belief that protecting homosexuals would also protect necrophiliacs.

The Taliban or the Suburban? The Republican Party has patched together a coalition of those who want to keep the government out of your pocket and those who want to put the government in your bedroom.

But the theocrats are giving them more trouble than the Democrats. What do you say about a law that lets police break into an apartment and arrest two men for having sex with the wrong person? Tallyho, Taliban.

Before the Santorum flap went flat it rubbed some more of the compassion off the conservative. Memo to Rick: a swing voter is not a swinger. Memo to the White House: What happens in the privacy of a home may show up in the privacy of the polling booth.

Ellen Goodman is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group,