Updated December 6, 4 p.m. ET
Rick Santorum got in a lengthy argument with young voters in Iowa on some pretty heavy topics: Life, death, health care, and gay sex.
Jason Kornelis, a 23-year-old recent college graduate, challenged Santorum on gay marriage, according to ABC News. Kornelis said that he could not see how legalizing gay marriage would “be a hit to faith and family in America.”
“You can’t think of any consequence?” Santorum asked rhetorically.
“Really- wow- um okay, well let’s see if we can have a discussion,” Santorum explained. “We can flesh out some, well, let’s look at what’s going to be taught in our schools because now we have same sex couples being the same and their sexual activity being seen as equal and being affirmed by society as heterosexual couples and their activity.”
“So what is going to be taught to our people in health class in our schools? What is going to be taught to our children about who in our stories, even to little children — what are married couples? What families look like in America? So, you are going to have in our curriculum, spread throughout our curriculum, worldview that is fundamentally different than what is taught in schools today? Is that not a consequence of gay marriage?”
Also, current student Ryan Walters also challenged Santorum on health care reform and the idea of Christian charity, saying that he did not think “God appreciates the fact that we have 50 to 100,000 uninsured Americans dying due to a lack of healthcare every year.”
“Dying?” Santorum replied. After a back and forth, he declared: “The answer is not what can we do to prevent deaths because of a lack of health insurance. There’s — I reject that number completely, that people die in America because of lack of health insurance.
“People die in America because people die in America. And people make poor decisions with respect to their health and their healthcare. And they don’t go to the emergency room or they don’t go to the doctor when they need to,” he said. “And it’s not the fault of the government for not providing some sort of universal benefit.”
ed. note: This post originally identified Kornelis as asking both the questions on gay marriage and health care, the latter of which was asked by Ryan Walters.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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