Rick Santorum, Republican candidate for
president, said on Monday that he opposes gay marriage because paper
towels are not napkins.
According
to the San Francisco Chronicle, Santorum made his remarks
in the food court of a HyVee grocery store in Iowa Falls, Iowa.
“I can call this napkin a paper
towel,” Santorum told a crowd of roughly 40 people “But it is a
napkin. And why? Because it is what it is. Right? You can call it
whatever you want, but it doesn't change the character of what it is.
So when people come out and say that marriage is something else –
marriage is the marriage of 5 people – 5, 10, 20. Marriage can be
between fathers and daughters. Marriage can be between any two
people, any four people, any 10 people, it can be any kind of
relationship and we can call it marriage. But it doesn't make it
marriage. Why? Because there are certain qualities and certain
things that attach to the definition of what marriage is.”
Last week, Santorum made a similar
argument: “It's like saying this glass of water is a glass of beer.
Well, you can call it a glass of beer, but it's not a glass of beer.
It's a glass of water. And water is what water is. Marriage is
what marriage is.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of
this page.)
On Wednesday, Santorum is expected to
board the National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) anti-gay
marriage bus tour, which is making its way through Iowa to the Ames
Straw Poll.