NBC host David Gregory on Sunday challenged Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) to explain why it was so important for children to have opposite-sex parents.

Huelskamp plans to introduce a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as solely between one man and one woman. During an appearance on Meet the Press, the Republican congressman insisted research had proven that children needed to have both a mother and a father to prosper.

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“Everybody throws that out, but the research actually shows that in broken homes, it hurts the children,” Gregory said. “Which I think most people would say that would be true of same-sex couples or heterosexual couples. We don’t really know, do we? But we do have a sense that loving marriages provide a good family life for children, right?”

“Well, we have an epidemic of fatherlessness,” Huelskamp responded. “And we should be doing more to promote and protect marriage.”

Huelskamp has previously said the Federal Marriage Amendment was now politically viable because of the outrage stirred up by the Supreme Court, which recently delivered victory to LGBT advocates by striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. On Meet the Press, he added that the country’s position on abortion indicated that banning same-sex marriage nationwide was possible.

“If you look at the issue of life and abortion, actually we are moving in that direction, where most Americans oppose most abortions,” he explained. “So by that same argument, we should be looking very closely at ending abortion in this country or something close to that.”

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