Last month, Rick Santorum spoke at the Midwest Republican Leadership Conference where he warned that the Supreme Court's recent DOMA decision would eventually lead to hate crimes prosecutions against Christians while stating that if the GOP ever embraces marriage equality, it will lead to "the destruction of our republic."
Blaming the shift in support for gay marriage on the television program "Will and Grace," Santorum said that Christians are now afraid of speaking out against it for fear of being called bigots and haters. Complaining that the DOMA decision ruled that people who oppose gay marriage do so only because they hate people who are gay, Santorum predicated that churches will eventually lose their tax-exempt status because of it.
"We have hate crimes in this country," Santorum warned, "for hate speech. It's coming."
Saying that "Christians are the most tolerant people in the world," Santorum claimed that Christian opposition to gay marriage is no longer being tolerated and declared that "for the Republican Party to even contemplate going along with this is the destruction of our republic":
