Rick Santorum On ‘The View’: Gay Couples Can Be ‘Positive And Nurturing’ Parents

Rick Santorum has had a remarkably tumultuous relationship with the LGBT community, which is why many will be surprised that the Republican presidential hopeful conceded that gay couples could potentially be viable parents while appearing on The View Wednesday morning.

Rick landed on the topic of gay families after being questioned about marriage equality by View co-host Raven Symoné — the only LGBT member of the show’s panel. Santorum responded with what has been his typical line for such questioning.

“Marriage has a particular role in society, and it always has… to encourage men and women to come together to form permanent bonds for the benefit of each other, and just like you would say, ‘Well, two women coming together, that benefits each other.'”

But a gay marriage, Santorum countered, does not provide the same societal benefit as a heterosexual one. Rick told The View co-host that marriage existed between a man and a woman mainly to give stability to families.

“The greater purpose of marriage that society has always valued is to bring men and women together so that when they have children there’s a permanent bond by which those children can be raised by their natural mother and natural father. When you have a law that says, as the Court says, that marriage has nothing to do with children anymore… Then what you’re going to have is a society that is not encouraging a behavior that is is the best interest of children and the future of society.”

Santorum’s defense of his anti-gay marriage stance didn’t convince Raven-Symoné. She continued to press Rick on why he felt that gay couples were any less capable of forming a functional family unit.

“I don’t understand why you feel like people in the gay and the transgender community can’t raise a very beautiful, smart, intelligent child just like a man and a women. When sometimes coming from a heterosexual family, there’s a lot more fighting going on… sometimes, let me get that straight, sometimes. I don’t understand why you don’t think a gay couple can provide for that child just as well as a straight couple can.”

Santorum countered that it wasn’t that gay couples are bad parents, but the possibility that they could care for a child could prevent it from being raised by its birth parents.

“I’m not saying that same sex couple can’t have a very positive and nurturing environment. But the natural mother and natural father of that child, is what historically and sociologically even today it’s in the best interest of that child to be raised. It’s in the best interest of the parents. That really what we want to encourage, we want to encourage that type of bond.”

Rick’s reply might not quite be a victory for pushing the candidate further to the left on gay marriage, though the words “positive and nurturing” used in reference to gay parents might be seen as a step in the right direction to some. In the end, Santorum’s statement comes off a little convoluted: gay marriage is bad because it can prevent children from being raised by their rightful heterosexual birth parents.

Rick is still maintaining a Republican presidential candidacy despite disappointing numbers in the polls. Last week, a Fox News survey found that Santorum was pulling 0 percent support along with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham. That’s even lower than Jim Gilmore, the Republican candidate who CNN declined to invite for the most recent debate, reported Bustle.

With the fallout over the Supreme Court’s ruling on national marriage equality and the ensuing Kim Davis debacle, LGBT rights have been a prime topic for candidates like Rick in the last few weeks. At the Values Voter Summit, Santorum stressed his early action in the Senate to create constitutional protection of heterosexual marriage, reported Washington Blade.

“I said, ‘We’ll have gay marriage within 10 years.’ I said this 11 years ago and I was wrong. I missed by a year.”

Do you think of Rick Santorum’s comments on The View constitute progress on gay adoption?

[Images via Steve Pope/Getty Images]