Santorum raises polygamy in defending stand against gay marriage
Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum speaks during a campaign stop with college students, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012, in Concord, N.H.
/ AP Photo/Jim ColeSantorum encouraged the debate with several audience members who attended his address at a college convention sponsored by New England College. The audience of about 200 people included several supporters of Santorum's rival, libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Some booed Santorum when he left the stage
One audience member, a college-aged man, asked Santorum how gay marriage affected him personally. A young woman asked him to justify his embrace of constitutional freedoms such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness while at the same time denying the right for gay couples to marry. They were the sort of in-your-face questions that New Hampshire town hall meetings are known for.
"Who's attempting to change the law?" Santorum replied. He sharply challenged the man to defend his support of gay marriage. Several audience members shouted answers in support of the questioner.
"Oh, no," Santorum said. "We're not going to shout." He admonished the crowd to raise their hands before speaking. Heeding his request, a gay marriage supporter suggested that Santorum is a hypocrite for restricting the right to marry while espousing constitutional rights to liberty, freedom and happiness.
"Are we saying that everybody should have the right to marry?" Santorum said, issuing a challenge to his audience.
"Yes!" several shouted.
Santorum: "So anyone can marry anyone else?"
"Yes!"
Santorum: "So anybody can marry multiple people?"
Crowd members grumbled and shouted over each other. Santorum called for order again - "OK, maybe we can't do this," he said. "We're going to have a civil discussion or move on to another question."
The crowd quieted and one woman spoke for the pro-gay marriage faction by saying that married couples don't harm anybody.
Replied Santorum: "What about three men?" He was being provocative and might not have expected the answer he got.
"Go for it," she said. Once he realized that she was condoning polygamy among same-sex couples, Santorum sarcastically framed the pro-gay marriage argument: Anybody, he said, can marry as many people as they want. The gay rights supporters stood and applauded Santorum, apparently mocking him.
He moved on gracefully and without objection from the crowd after restating his view that God created men and women with the specific purpose to reproduce and marry. "I believe God made man that way," he said.
Much later in the event, after taking several question unrelated to gay marriage, Santorum field one more on the topic. He briefly answered it and, thanking the audience for inviting him, ended the 70-minute appearance.
As he walked from the lectern to sign a convention banner, several crowed members booed - marring what was otherwise a mostly civil debate between the candidate and the crowd.
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Santorum is absolutely, positively correct that endorsing gay marriage will lead to laws accepting polygamy and everything else.
I voted for Prop 8 and fully suspect the 9th Circuit to vacate the District Court's decision because the feds have no business getting involved in marriage laws DECIDED BY THE STATES.
Particularly when certain states have agreed to gay marriage in their state. The courts can not have it both ways. The courts can not demand that states which oppose gay marriage implement gay marriage when other states have freely chosen that law for their state. That is not how it works in this country.
Frankly, those states did not think this through. Right after the District Court ruled against Prop 8, polygamists in Utah filed suit saying their rights were discriminated against.
Bottom line is that the polygamists have a point.
BTW almost every word you say shows what you are to any intelligent and not brainwashed person.
Thaks for calling my kid who goes to college in HH as vermin
Go look in the mirror.
Whose religious freedom (THEIR LATEST MOTTO) was shown in the 1930s in Germany by the web site http://nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
Q1 - who accused the Jews of Deicide and the blood libel biz in Europe for a thousand years?
Q2 who was born and baptised catholic in very catholic Austria in `1888
Who wrote Mein Kampf where he showed his hatred of the Jews growing up in very catholic Austria in 1888.
What pope UNExcommunciated Bishop Willaimson, a holocaust denier- Minimizer in 2009 and in what country and what era did he grow up
Yep,he's the one, for sure.
Why does greater society as a whole have to benefit in order to change laws designed to improve the lot of a minority?
I'm sure that women in the early 20th century wouldn't have benefited from suffrage if that attitude had prevailed? Nor pre-civil war slaves either, for that matter. This is a civil rights issue, really; just like the others in our history.
Remember that we live in a constitutional republic; this was established to protect the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority.
Of course one of the restrictions that has kept Muslims from immigrating to the US is polygamy.
I guess if they open the door to gay marriage, then it is only just to allow polygamy to be legally recognized as well, no matter whether or not those who practice it are Fundamentalist Mormons or Fundamentalist Muslims.