Speaking at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, Colo., GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum on Friday denounced New York’s legalization of gay marriage, and said there are simply some things that shouldn’t be left to states.
“States do not have the right to destroy the American family. It is your business,” Santorum said.
“It is not fine with me that New York has destroyed marriage. It is not fine with me that New York is setting a template that will cause great division in this country.”
The vehemently anti-gay Santorum said he supports a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and cited Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote — “We do not have the right to do wrong.”
At a campaign stop earlier in the week in Ankeny, Iowa, Santorum said he supports “great latitude for the states,” but there’s a limit — an apparently that limit is marriage equality.
“This idea that the 10th amendment means there is no boundary to what the states can do is a misunderstanding of the 10th amendment and I will stand on that ground.”
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In an interview published Saturday in the Des Moines Register, Santorum said a federally uniform definition of marriage should be agreed on by Americans.
“You can’t have 50 different definitions of marriage,” he said.
“It’s wrong and we should fight it in every state and we should try to pass a federal law that makes sure that it is a uniform definition. […] I think this is an issue that needs to be settled collectively by the American public, not by a few groups of elites who think it best to redesign the American culture.”
Also on Friday, in a reference back to his failed 2006 re-election campaign, the former Pennsylvania Senator denied ever comparing same-sex marriage to incest or polygamy, as accused by gay rights activist Tim Gill.
Gill was referring to this quote from an April 7, 2003 recorded interview with the Associated Press (transcript here), in which Santorum said:
“And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
According to Santorum, however, that wasn’t a “comparison.”
