Former presidential candidate Rick
Santorum believes the legalization of gay marriage would discourage
heterosexual couples from marrying.
Santorum, who lost the 2012 GOP
presidential nomination to Mitt Romney, made his remarks during an
appearance on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.
“Would we be discouraging
heterosexual marriage by allowing gay marriage?” host Bill O'Reilly
asked.
“Yeah, I believe we would,”
Santorum
answered. “And because we'd be saying that marriage isn't
about children. Isn't about having children. Isn't about raising
children. And when we say that, then, of course, the consequences
are you're probably going to have less children. It's happening as
we see it. It's already happening in America. Before this whole gay
marriage debate, we really have seen a change in what marriage is in
America.”
“And if marriages go away, then you
don't have stable families raising the next generation. And if you
look at places that in fact have gone through and changed their
definition of marriage, what you have seen is lower birth rates.
What you have seen is lower marriage rates. What you have seen is
problems that come from that. So, the biggest issue is that we need
to encourage men and women to come together and form stable families
and have children so society can continue because if that doesn't
happen, it won't.”