Rick Santorum
American politician.
I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.
If there's one statement that everyone in this room should remember that the President of the United States says, that sums up how the President looks at America, he said it about 6 weeks ago. He was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, and he said this was in response to the Ryan budget. And he said this, he said, talking about these three programs: He said 'America is a better country because of these programs. I will go one step further: America is a great country because of these programs.' Ladies and gentlemen, America was a great country before 1965.
It's like going out and saying, "That tree is a car." Well, the tree's not a car. A tree's a tree. Marriage is marriage. You can say that tree is something other than it is. It can redefine it. But it doesn't change the essential nature of what marriage is. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the purposes of the benefit of both the man and the woman, a natural unitive according to nature, unitive, that is for the purposes of having and rearing children and for the benefit of both the man and the woman involved in that relationship. And for the benefit of society because we need to have stable families of men and woman bonded together to raise children. That's what marriage is.
The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.
At a time when, over and over again, we were told, "Forget it, you can't win", we were winning. We were winning in a very different way, because we were touching hearts. We were raising issues that, well, frankly, a lot of people didn't want to have raised.