Rick Santorum On Contraception (Hint: It's Bad!)

Santorum (runner-up to Romney in the 2012 Republican primaries):

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before [hey, Rick, you're not president quite yet] is what I think is the danger of contraception. The whole sexual libertine idea that many in the Christian faith have said, well, it's ok, contraception's ok. But it's not ok.

It's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. It is supposed to be within marriage. It is supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal and also unitive but also procreative and that's the perfect way that sexual union should happen. When you take any part of that out, we diminish the act.

If you can take one part out, if it's not for the purpose of procreation, that's not one of the reasons you diminish this very special bond between men and women. So why can't you take other parts of it out? It becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure...

I'm not runnning for preacher, I'm not running for pastor. But these are important public policy issues. These have profound impact on the health of our society. I'm not talking about moral health, although clearly moral health, but I'm talking economic health, I'm talking about out of wedlock birth rates, sexually transmitted diseases.

These are profound issues that we only like to talk about from a scientific point of view. Well that's one point of view, but we also need to have the courage to talk about the moral aspects of it and the purpose and rationale for why we do what we do.