Rick Santorum: Traditional marriage helps the economy, our civilization

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum answers questions at a news conference at the statehouse Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

As President Obama released his budget proposal on Monday and Gregoire signed the same-sex marriage bill, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum made a campaign stop in Olympia, Washington.

Santorum told 770 KTTH’s David Boze that the culture of marriage as it is now is tearing families apart, and that’s bad for the economy.

“I’m not just talking about same-sex marriage, I’m talking about the divorce culture and everything else, it’s really tearing apart families and what we really need to do is get moms and dads […] men and women, back involved in relationships that are stable and are best for children,” said Santorum.

According to Santorum, the percentage of people married in the last 30 years has dropped from 71 percent of people over the age of 18 to just over 51 percent.

Campaigning with a message of family values, Santorum has also said that a two parent family helps boost the economy. Two parent families, he said, are much less likely to be in poverty or have children that end up with problems in school, whether it be related to drugs or crime.

Santorum said it’s just not a matter of just family values or just the economy: It’s also a matter of continuing our civilization as we know it.

“This is sort of just basics, of what every civilization needs,” he told Boze. “If you know you look [at] the rest of the world, you see a lot of countries, a lot of western countries, that have marriage rates that are even lower than ours, that have birth rates lower than ours, and the civilization is, in a sense, dying.”

He called the lower birth rates, stemming from the low marriage rates a “societal suicide,” and added, “This is why you have to support traditional marriage and you have to support this union for traditional marriage.”

Watch David’s Boze’s recap and response of his interview with Rick Santorum here:

By Alyssa Kleven, MyNorthwest.com