Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said schools are forgetting about the “traditional mom and dad marriage” books to make room for books advocating for acceptance of LGBT parents, according to Boston Herald Live on June 21. The Republican presidential candidate also said that children with LGBT parents were more likely to be do poorly in school, and that LGBT people hurt the economy.
“I know at the grade schools in Massachusetts they teach these books and plays that say, ‘Suzy has two moms’,” said Santorum. “It’s okay to put a book that says, ‘Suzy has two moms,’ but you can’t put a book in there about moms and dads and marriage and tell people how important it is to be married before you have children. Then you’re moralizing. It’s okay to say, ‘Suzy has two moms,’ or ‘Johnny has two dads,’ but you can’t say marriage is an important part of having a stable and healthy economy.”
Santrum continued down his slippery slope:
“You really need, if you’re going to improve the schools, to talk to any teacher or any administrator and they’ll say if that child comes from a stable family that emphasizes education, that the chances of them being successful is much higher than if the opposite is true. Kids from other families can do well and many are heroic and do great but the failure rate is much higher so yes emphasizing the importance of family will be an important part of this.”
A complementary brief by the American Sociological Association presented research on same-sex parents that showed that for academic performance and cognitive development, children with same-sex parents have similar educational outcomes to children with different-sex parents, if not better.
As for Santorum’s concern about the economy, federal government and state governments would see a small increase in tax revenues, according to ThinkProgress.org Lower cash assistance and Medicaid spending would make up for state and federal spending on benefits. Couples would also be spending money on the U.S.’s $51 billion wedding industry, which employs over 800,000 people, according to NerdWallet, which could generate $2.5 billion for local economies.
Take that, Santorum.
