Santorum urges support for marriage

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., urged conservatives Thursday to back a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

No issue is more important to the country than the stability of the American family, Santorum told an audience of conservatives at CPAC. "If you believe in conservative governance," Santorum said, "then you fundamentally have to be for marriage as the union of one man and one woman."

Santorum said critics of the proposed amendment on the right would do well to look to communities where marriage is no longer highly valued. "You will find mothers struggling economically, socially culturally," Santorum said."When people stop getting married then fathers stop participating in the lives of their children," adding "If Mom and Dad aren't there to raise a child, then some else has to bridge the gap and that someone else is the government."

"Look at what happened to families and children when fathers are not present," Santorum said, explaining that social pathologies like drug abuse, suicide and promiscuity are at least twice as likely to be present in the home. Marriages, he said, give hope that children might avoid the dangers of contemporary society. "When we get away from (marriage)," Santorum said, "we do so in peril to us in put the next generation of Americans in danger."