Parenting & Family Quote by Rick Santorum

Santorum isn’t describing history so much as drafting a permission slip for policy. The opening move, “Every society,” is a classic political absolutism: it flattens centuries of messy anthropology into a single, comforting myth of permanence. It’s less an argument than a boundary line. If marriage has always been one thing, then changing it isn’t reform; it’s rupture.

The quote’s engine is teleology: society exists for its “future,” the future is “children,” children require “monogamous relationships,” and monogamy is implied to require heterosexual marriage. Each step is presented as self-evident, which is the trick. By stacking premises without defending them, Santorum shifts the debate from rights and equality to survival and continuity. The emotional subtext is protective and punitive at once: protect “the future,” punish deviations as selfish or destabilizing.

Context matters: Santorum rose as a culture-war virtuoso in the Republican coalition, especially during the years when same-sex marriage moved from taboo to mainstream. This framing neatly recasts a conflict about adult relationships into a question about kids, where voters are more likely to accept state involvement. It also smuggles in a hierarchy of legitimacy: marriages that don’t produce (or prioritize) children are treated as social luxuries rather than civic foundations.

The final two words, “Monogamous relationships,” read like an attempted clincher but also a tell. They reveal the anxiety beneath the certainty: the fear that if marriage stops being policed as a procreative institution, it becomes a choice, not a duty. And duties, unlike choices, are easier to legislate.