Santorum and Students Clash on Gay Marriage

2012 GOP presidential candidate Rick SantorumAndrew A. Nelles/ZUMA Press

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Is Rick Santorum a bully?

It came close to that in Concord, New Hampshire, on Thursday when he addressed a convention of college students who had trekked to the Granite State from across the nation to witness the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. After a long discourse on American exceptionalism—in which Santorum claimed that President Barack Obama does not believe the United States is “objectively” better than all other countries, as Santorum says he does—the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, who virtually tied Mitt Romney in Iowa earlier this week, took questions. It was no surprise that one of the first queries was about his fierce opposition to gay marriage. Two students asked Santorum how he could justify this opposition with his opening remarks that focused on the guarantee, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that no American shall be deprived of the “pursuit of happiness.”

“So anyone can marry several people?” Santorum asked. “What about three men?”

Santorum has been in this spot before, and he easily adopted a here-we-go-again stance, and, in a somewhat condescending manner, struck back with…logic. Or what he claimed to be logic. He asked the students to justify gay marriage. When one said, “How about the idea that all men are created equal and [have] the right to happiness and liberty,” Santorum asked, Are you saying that everyone should have the right to marry anyone?

The student said yes. And Santorum quickly retorted. “So anyone can marry several people?”

No, the student said.

But what if someone can only be happy if he or she was married to five people? Santorum asked her.

Others in the crowd starting jeering him. “That’s not the point,” one shouted.

But Santorum, who kept cutting off the students, stuck to this argument. When the students talked about equal rights, he repeatedly interrupted, “What about three men?”

“That’s irrelevant,” one of the students said.

“No, it’s not,” he said.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said.

With a smile, Santorum said, “If we’re going to have a conversation based on rational, reasonable thought…if people say it’s okay for two, then you have to say why it’s not right for three.”

Santorum looked as happy as if he was scoring points in a high school debating match.

He noted that for his interlocutors, “marriage really means whatever you want it to be.” Many in the crowd applauded—to show approval of that notion.

But then Santorum got to the nut of his argument: “God made man and woman…and men and women come together to produce children.” And, he went on, when children do not have both a father and a mother, “we are harming children, we are harming society.”

His bottom-line was clear: Gays and lesbians are not good parents for the youth of the greatest country that ever existed. So no marriage for them.

When he was done, Santorum thanked the students for a feisty debate. Many booed him. And in one corner of the room an argument broke out between a middle-aged woman and a 68-year-old woman over unemployment benefits, with the older woman saying she was sick of working hard to pay for others not to work.

Through it all, Santorum had displayed a friendly disposition, but he certainly had not tried to hide the sharp corners of his archly conservative beliefs. And he had hardly brought this crowd together.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate