Famously antigay politician Rick Santorum says LGBT people have "silenced" churches -- and that's why young people are so supportive of LGBT equality.
A former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and a prospective Republican presidential candidate, Santorum was interviewed Wednesday on the radio program Washington Watch With Tony Perkins. Perkins, who is president of the well-known anti-LGBT organization Family Research Council, asked him about a lawsuit in Houston, where some ministers are involved in efforts to repeal a nondiscrimination ordinance.
Here's a snippet of what Santorum said:
"I really believe in this subject matter at hand with the gay community that a Judeo-Christian worldview cannot survive with a worldview that is as rabidly secular as this movement is. One is going to battle the other and I can tell you that the statists, these secular statists, do not want the competition that comes from the church and so they are going to do everything they can to marginalize them, to force them out of the public square to be quiet. ...
"We're losing in this particular area among young people. ... it's because they have effectively silenced the church on a lot of these issues and young people don't even know what the opposing view is on these issues."
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Santorum, whose name gained a double meaning thanks to sex columnist Dan Savage, has been an anti-LGBT force in U.S. politics for years. He opposed the repeal of antisodomy laws with the "slippery slope" argument that doing so would lead the way to legalizing polygamy and incest. More recently, he accused colleges of indoctrinating students in the "gay agenda." And this year, he took part in a the National Organization for Marriage's March for Marriage -- heterosexual marriage only, of course.
Listen to a clip of his appearance with Perkins below, courtesy of Right Wing Watch.
