Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) were asked this week whether they would attend a gay wedding.
Rubio said he would, Santorum said he would not, and Cruz dodged the question completely.
Jorge Ramos, a Fusion host, asked newly-announced Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio whether he's attend a same-sex ceremony if someone in his family or someone in his office happens to be gay.
“If there’s someone who I love that’s in my life, I don’t necessarily have agree with their decisions or the decisions they’ve made, to continue to love them and participate in important events,” Rubio replied.
He pointed out that as a Catholic, “second marriages,” like gay marriages, are not permitted by his faith, “but people attend second marriages all the time.”
“Ultimately how you treat a person that you care for and love is different from what your opinion is or what your faith teaches marriage should be,” said Rubio.
“If people want to change the definition of marriage, they should petition their state legislature, and they can have that debate in the political arena,” he added.
“I’m not going to hurt them simply because I disagree with a choice they’ve made or I disagree with a decision they’ve made… if someone you care for and is part of your family has decided to move in one direction or another, or feels that way because of who they love, you respect that because you love them,” he said.
Conservative host Hugh Hewitt then posed the same question separately to both Rick Santorum and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz when they were on his radio show.
Santorum replied quickly: “No, I would not.”
“No? Why not?” asked a surprised-sounding Hewitt.
“I just feel like, as a person of my faith, that would be something that would be a violation of my faith. I would love them and support them, but I would not participate in that ceremony.”
Hewitt put the same question to Cruz.
Without a yes or no answer, Cruz responded: “I will tell you, I have not faced that circumstance. I have not had a loved one go to a – have – a gay wedding.”
Cruz then launched into a riff on the “mainstream media” and its “gotcha game” against Republicans.
Both Cruz and Santorum attacked “the left” for asking candidates questions about gay marriage instead of how they’d fight the threat of ISIS, who “throws gay men to their death.”
The “media tries to twist the question of marriage into a battle of emotions and personalities,” Cruz said. “They routinely say, ‘Well, gosh, any conservative must hate people who are gay.’ And as you know, that has nothing to do with the operative legal question. And listen, I’m a Christian, and scripture commands us to love everyone, and all of us are sinners.”
The left doesn’t “focus their energy on anything but the attempt to gather more power here in this country by using this issue of same-sex marriage as a tool,” Santorum said.
Rubio and Cruz both said they’d leave the question of marriage to the states and oppose attempts from the courts to circumvent states’ decisions.
“I’m a Constitutionalist. And under the Constitution, from the beginning of this country, marriage has been a question for the states…. And what we’ve seen in recent years, from the left, is the Federal government and unelected Federal judges, imposing their own policy preferences to tear down the marriage laws of the states,” said Cruz. “It’s perfectly legitimate… to ask [a candidate] their views on whether they’re willing to defend the Constitution, which leaves marriage to the states, or whether they’d want to impose their own marriage views, like so many on the left are doing.”
Rubio echoed that view.
“Who I don’t think should be redefining marriage is the court system,” said Rubio.
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