Stating, “We can’t have 50 different marriage laws in this country,” Rick Santorum vowed to unmarry the 131,000 or more same-sex legally married couples in America, according to an article Saturday in the San Francisco Chronicle. And while the statement itself isn’t news — he first made the comment in late December — it does bear repeating:
There are 18,000 married gay and lesbian couples in California and at least 131,000 nationwide according to the 2010 census, conducted before New York state legalized same-sex marriage in July.
Rick Santorum says he’ll try to unmarry all of them if he’s elected president.
Once the U.S. Constitution is amended to prohibit same-gender marriages, “their marriage would be invalid,” the former Pennsylvania senator said Dec. 30 in an NBC News interview.
“We can’t have 50 different marriage laws in this country,” he said. “You have to have one marriage law.”
Note to Mr. Santorum: We already have 50 different marriage laws in this country. Marriage, for better or worse, is a state issue. States get to decide who can marry, who can marry whom, when, at what age, under what circumstances, and so on. And so, there already are 50 different marriage laws in this country.
READ:Â Separation Of Church And State: Vast Majority Disagree With Santorum
But the very idea of “unmarrying” married couples exemplifies the height of arrogance and the depths of depravity — not to mention hypocrisy — Santorum sells.
Why is it the Republican Party in general, and Rick Santorum in particular, can claim to care more about family than Democrats, but be the first to define what “family” is, who can have one, who cannot, what that family should look like, and have zero compunction about breaking up a family that doesn’t fit their template?
“Santorum’s position is noteworthy because laws revoking individual rights are usually drafted, or interpreted by the courts, to apply only to future conduct,” the Chronicle article notes, adding:
Santorum’s proposal for constitutionally mandated divorces would affect couples like Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis of San Francisco, longtime partners who wed in June 2008, five months before Prop. 8 banned same-sex marriage. The couple later helped to found an organization called Marriage Equality USA.
“It’s with profound sadness that I contemplate somebody running for the highest office in the land on a platform of taking away anyone’s marriage,” Gaffney said Friday.
Rick Santorum has proven himself so far out of the mainstream, he not running for president, but for Pope.