Rick Santorum insists a heterosexual
father always trumps gay parents – even if that father is locked in
jail, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Santorum made his remark during a town
hall meeting Friday at Dublin School, a private boarding high school
in Dublin, New Hampshire.
“Marriage is not a right,” Santorum
said of gay marriage, echoing a sentiment he expressed earlier in the
day. “It's a privilege that is given to society by society for a
reason. … We want to encourage what is the best for children.”
(Related: Rick
Santorum booed again over gay marriage opposition in New Hampshire.)
He added that children need a mother
and father, saying that even a father who “is in jail and who had
abandoned” his family is preferred over a same-sex household.
Citing Jason DeParle's 2005 book
American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End
Welfare, Santorum said: “One of the things he talked about …
was the lack of fathers, and he found that even fathers in jail who
had abandoned their kids were still better than no father at all to
have in their childrens' lives.”
Allowing gay and lesbian couples to
marry and raise children, Santorum said, amounts to “robbing
children of something they need, they deserve, they have a right to.
You may rationalize that that isn't true, but in your own life and in
your own heart, you know it's true.”