Rick Santorum has pinned gay marriage as the reason fewer Americans are getting married.
According to a report released Wednesday by the Washington D.C. think tank Pew Research Center, the current number of married adults over 18 has dropped to a record of 51 percent. That's a 21 percent drop from 1960.
Santorum, considered the GOP presidential field's most outspoken candidate on marriage equality, tweeted on Wednesday to his nearly 46,000 followers, "Here is 1 effect of changing definition of marriage," along with a Huffington Post link to a story on the study.
Pew researcher D'Vera Cohn never mentioned gay marriage as a reason for the decline.
When the Huffington Post asked, "Why aren't people getting married?" Cohn answered: "There are a number of things going on that could play a role. One is that there are other kinds of living arrangements that are socially acceptable now that may not have been in the past, such as living with someone without being married, living on your own, or even living as a single parent. So people may feel they have options that they didn't used to have. Another factor in some cases is that among Americans who complete college, or education beyond that, they may want to get their education done and get launched in a career before they settle down and get married. From some surveys we've taken, we've had people say that it's important, at least for men, to be financially able to provide for a family before they get married. It may [also] be that some couples feel they don't have the financial wherewithal to have a wedding yet."