Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum recently pledged to "die on that hill" fighting against same-sex marriage, and made a similar vow to repeal all federal funding for contraception because it is "a license to do things in a sexual realm."
Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, made the claims during an interview with CaffeinatedThoughts.com editor Shane Vander Hart, according to Think Progress. He declared that no other president had previously discussed "the dangers of contraception" and said that "sex is supposed to be within marriage" and "special."
He went on to describe "the battle" on same-sex marriage, claiming that allowing gay marriage would shake "the very foundation of our country, the family, what the family structure is going to look like."
"I'll die on that hill," Santorum said, pledging to fight for a federal ban on same-sex marriage.
This isn't the first time Santorum has spoken out against non-traditional families. The Huffington Post's Laura Bassett reports that Santorum recently said the GOP's strategy for eliminating the "Democratic advantage" should be to marry off single mothers who "look to the government for help" and focus on building "two-parent families."
"Look at the political base of the Democratic Party: It is single mothers who run a household," he told Tony Perkins, president of the Christian conservative think tank Family Research Council. "Why? Because it's so tough economically that they look to the government for help and therefore they're going to vote. So if you want to reduce the Democratic advantage, what you want to do is build two parent families, you eliminate that desire for government."
Santorum is also notorious for his opposition to same-sex marriage. He has hit other GOP 2012 hopefuls for not supporting a federal "uniform definition of marriage" and has suggested that the "breakdown of the American family" wrecked the economy.