AP Photo Congressman links Baltimore crisis to same-sex marriage Republican Bill Flores blames the breakdown of the traditional family.

Texas Rep. Bill Flores said this week that ongoing unrest in Baltimore could be related to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States and “the breakdown of the family.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins hosted Flores on the group’s radio program Tuesday after conservative crowds gathered outside the Supreme Court to rally against same-sex marriage while justices heard arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges.


Perkins suggested that the government is making more issues for itself with continued rulings in favor of same-sex rights.

“Government is kind of the last stop to fix problems. I would argue they’re not the best to fix these problems, but they have to deal with the problems,” Perkins said. “And a lot of these problems are created by the breakdown of the family, which the redefinition of marriage would only accelerate.”

“You’re exactly right, Tony,” said Flores, the chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee.

“Let’s talk about poverty for instance,” he said, noting that the “single best indicator of whether or not a child is going to be in poverty or not is whether or not they were raised by a two-parent household or a single-parent household. And so the breakdown of the family has contributed to poverty.”

Flores then made the link between the Supreme Court case and what he thought might be behind recent events in Baltimore.

“You look at what’s going on in Baltimore today, you know, you see issues that are raised there,” Flores said. “And healthy marriages are the ones between a man and a woman because they can have a healthy family and they can raise children in the way that’s best for their future, not only socially but psychologically, economically, from a health perspective.”

“There’s just nothing like traditional marriage that does that for a child. Each of us has a mother and a father, and there’s just no way to get around that,” he said.

The interview was first reported by Right Wing Watch.