If I were able to actually have a conversation with Santorum in which the historical reality of sanctioned polygamy in most human societies was made impossible for him to ignore or soundbite into oblivion, I’m willing to bet that the likely way out of the trap would be to argue that contemporary life has overcome that old evil, that we’ve progressed. Santorum and other American Christian conservatives would likely put the origin of that progress somewhere other than secular liberals would. They’d probably ascribe it to the rise of Christianity, all the way back to the early Church, whereas a more secular (or at least not religiously conservative) view would probably be than contemporary companionate, monogamous marriage (or any companionate, monogamous relationship, really) is a direct consequence of the working out of liberal individualism and rights-based personhood after 1750.
But it really doesn’t matter which claim you turn to. If you think that the relative eclipse of polygamy (still practiced and legally as well as morally sanctioned in many parts of the world) is a good thing, as I presume Santorum does given his suggestion that legally sanctioning gay marriage would open the door to polygamy, you believe in progress, that some aspects of the human condition have improved over time through the deliberate efforts of human beings to reform or change their social structures. And the moment you believe in that, saying, “It’s natural for people to live a certain way, all societies have done it that way” is off the table as a justification of contemporary policy whether or not your claim about the naturalness of living that way is true or not.
Breaking out of this trap is no more complicated than acknowledging the reality of social construction and continuing to assert a nature that lies underneath this. Following on Aquinas and all those people, human beings have a nature which, but for sin and free will, would express itself in the manner prescribed in, e.g., those infallible truths about faith and morals as expressed in the teaching of the Magisterium, which is and only can be consistent throughout time. But we have both the reality of sin and also of free will, therefore we have the construction of behaviors contrary or orthogonal to human nature. These do not accrue or decay over time in any necessary pattern--they simply change. That progress may have been made is no guarantee that it will always do so, or even probably do so. That things may get worse is no guarantee they always will. The trap into which Burke wants Santorum to fall is an easy one to avoid for someone with Santorum's beliefs.
The actual problem for which there is no good response is similar to the point Burke raises: what changes over time is not socially-constructed human behavior, but the definition of what constitutes natural. My favored example of this comes from John Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights. In the original edition of the book, Finnis makes a great show of his list of 'basic goods.' Other lists of human goods, he says, are general, or specific but not exhaustive. He will differentiate himself by providing the full list--and so he does. However, in the 10-15 years after the book comes out, he finds himself beginning to get into arguments about gay marriage, and happens to discover that he has omitted a basic good from his list: marriage, defined as the union for procreation of one man and one woman. I know (and have great respect for) many adherents of Finnis' New Natural Law view, but I know of no one who will defend that particular move. (Some will argue it should have been on the list in the first place, but everyone recognizes it as a bad scholarly response to political pressure) If there's an argument to be had along the lines Burke wants, with the recognition of frission required for a certain kind of social conservative view, it will have to be of that form.
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