Rick Santorum's latest anti-gay
narrative is the indirect suggestion that gay marriage has wrecked
the economy.
In remarks during Tuesday's Bloomberg
debate on the economy, Santorum said the economy suffers when the
family is in trouble.
“[T]he biggest problem with poverty
in America, and we don't talk about here, because it's an economic
discussion – and that is the breakdown of the American family,”
said Santorum.
“You want to look at the poverty rate
among families that have two – that have a husband and wife working
in them? It's 5 percent today. A family that's headed by one
person? It's 30 percent today. We need to do something, we need to
talk about economics. The home – the word 'home' in Greek is the
basis of the word 'economy.' It is the foundation of our country.
We need to have a policy that supports families, that encourages
marriage.”
In the spin room after the debate,
Santorum told a small scrum of reporters: “As I said, economy …
starts at the home, starts with the family, it is the first economy,
and if that economy breaks down the overall economy can't succeed.”
In
August, Santorum said that marriage equality encourages “the
family [to] break down” and leads “to a society that's broken.”
He expanded on the theme during a
Wednesday campaign stop in Concord, New Hampshire where he told a
crowd of roughly three dozen people that one-man, one-woman marriage
is the basis of American society.
“Our country is not founded on the
individual,” Santorum said. “It is founded on the basic unit of
society, which is the family. You don't want to found your society
on individuals, because that's like founding a house on grains of
sand.”