Rick Santorum Will Unmarry Gay Couples If Elected

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum says, if elected, he'll try to unmarry the more than 100,000 legally wed gay couples in the U.S., reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Chronicle states that 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." During an interview with NBC News December 30, Santorum said that when the U.S. Constitution is amended to prohibit same-gender marriages, "their marriage would be invalid. We can't have 50 different marriage laws in this country," he said. "You have to have one marriage law."

Among the couples that would be affected by Santorum's proposed constitutionally mandated divorces are Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis of San Francisco. The two men legally wed in June 2008, five months before Prop. 8 banned same-sex marriage. The couple, who were together for many years before marrying, 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 told the Chronicle Friday.