Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum says the Supreme Court decision on Friday ruling bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional is "potentially disrupting the foundation of the world."
Santorum, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, said he wasn't surprised at the ruling, citing the previous ruling from the court striking down the Defense of Marriage of Act. He called Friday a "very sad day."
"Justice Kennedy said -- this is remarkable but listen to it -- the only reason that any could oppose gay marriage is because they hated gays and lesbians. Which is almost stops you in your tracks," Santorum said.
"That five thousand years of human history, a biblically-given thing that God somehow gave us marriage as a man and woman, that that was, that somehow that was intrinsically about hating other people. Which is very, very sad to see how the culture's changed and how this one man, this is it, this one man, this one man, a 5-4 decision is going to try to affect the basic foundation of America, and frankly, now, with America leading the way, potentially disrupting the foundation of the world."
Santorum said the next thing to do after the court ruling was to fight to be able "to even to talk about it," because people will try to "silence any disagreement." He said it was not time "to move on," because then they would lose ground in arguing for religious liberty.
"There's no slippery slope here," the former Pennsylvania senator added, "religious liberty is under assault today, not going to be, it is, and it's going to be even more so as we say with this decision."
"Now that this is the law of the land," he said. "The question is going to be whether we are going to allow people to actually dissent on this or whether if they are going to be treated as the proponents of this position have advocated: this is a civil rights position and if you oppose this you're the equivalent a racist back in the 50s and 60s."
Santorum suggest churches and others who dissent could lose the privileges of tax benefits.