Rick Santorum has said that he and
President Barack Obama share the same position on gay marriage, gay
weekly Metro
Weekly reported.
At a campaign stop at the Derry-Salem
Elks Club on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Santorum claimed
that the only difference between his opposition to marriage equality
and Obama's position was that he was willing to talk about it.
“Everyone on the stage yesterday and
the day before has pretty much the exact same position I have on all
those [social] issues. President Obama says he has the same position
I have on gay marriage. The only difference is between myself and
any of them is that when somebody asks me a question, I answer it.”
(The video is embedded in the right panel of this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Santorum has said that he believes in
one nationwide heterosexual standard for marriage, because a child
being raised by a gay couple is deprived of either a mother or a
father, though
he has placed more emphasis on the role of a father in a child's
development.
Obama is opposed to gay marriage,
though he has said on a number of occasions that he is “evolving”
on the issue. However, Obama is also opposed to the Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA), the law that bars federal agencies from
recognizing the legal marriages of gay couples. Last year, he
instructed the Department of Justice to no longer defend the law in
court and has backed proposed legislation that would repeal it.
That is, Obama does not favor laws that
ban gay marriage or limit the rights of married gay couples, while
Santorum does.
(Related: Glenn
Beck defends Rick Santorum's opposition to gay marriage.)