Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick
Santorum has joined former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in blaming the
economic downturn on gay marriage.
During a radio interview with Tony
Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), and Tim
Wildmon, president of the American Family Association (AFA), Santorum
attempted to link increased support for the legalization of gay
marriage to the nation's economic woes.
“Letting the family break down and in
fact encouraging it and inciting more breakdown through this whole
redefinition of marriage debate, and not supporting strong nuclear
families and not supporting and standing up for the dignity of human
life,” Santorum
said. “Those lead to a society that’s broken.”
“If you think that we can be a
society that kills our own, and that disregards the family and the
important role it plays, and doesn't teach moral values and the
important role of faith in the public square, and then expect people
to be good, decent and moral when they behave economically, if you
look at the root cause of the economic problems that we're dealing
with on Wall Street and Main Street I might add, from 2008, they were
huge moral failings. And you can't say that we're gonna take
morality out of the public square, morality out of our schools, God
out of our schools, and then expect people to behave decently in a
country that requires, capitalism requires some strong modicum of
moral consciousness if it's gonna be successful.”
Earlier, Gingrich
made a similar argument while discussing “radical secularists”
who are attacking the family: “[T]here's a core absolute
overlap between free enterprise, freedom and freedom of faith. And
if you don't have freedom of faith in the end you're not going to
have free enterprise because there's no moral force that defends and
protects you.”