OXON HILL, Md. — The political fight over gay marriage won’t end with a likely Supreme Court decision this year, Rick Santorum told the Washington Examiner on Friday.
“Has abortion died as a political issue?” Santorum said during an interview from his suite at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he spoke. “When the Supreme Court steps in and shortcuts the American people in making a decision about the important issues that affect everybody’s life, it usually doesn’t sit well. Particularly when it’s something that is going to have profound ramifications to particularly people of faith.”
The Supreme Court is expected to decide this summer whether states may ban gay marriage, potentially throwing a curveball for presidential candidates and shifting the tone of the political debate over marriage. The court recently declined to overturn an Alabama ruling legalizing gay marriage, an early indication that the Supreme Court might ultimately rule to legalize gay marriage nationwide.
Santorum, a former senator who in 2012 won the Iowa caucuses after gaining momentum as a conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, made headlines in the last presidential election for some of his staunch anti-gay marriage views.
“Marriage is not a right,” Santorum said in New Hampshire in early 2012, according to a Los Angeles Times report. “It’s a privilege that is given to society by society for a reason. …We want to encourage what is the best for children.”
Now, Santorum is likely to launch another campaign for president, with his rhetoric on this issue largely unchanged. Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, Santorum told the Examiner, he does not expect the issue will suddenly become politically moot in the 2016 cycle.
Although the issue was scarcely mentioned at CPAC, Santorum reasoned that that was more a reflection of the audience and less of the temperature of the Republican field.
“Mike Huckabee’s not here, he probably feels like this is not his crowd. And Rand Paul is here with the Ron Paul bots that have been here for decades. That’s more what this crowd is,” Santorum said. “So, I think that’s probably why you’ve seen less of a focus on those issues.”
