Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday compared his war against reproductive rights and gay rights to the Civil Rights Movement, and attacked Newt Gingrich for putting social issues "in the back of the bus."

"In terms of social issues [Gingrich] has been married three times, he has two divorces, he's admitted to infidelity," ABC's Christiane Amanpour noted during an interview with Santorum. "Should voters hold that against him?"

"I think character is definitely an issue," Santorum opined. "I've been married 21 years, I have seven children. That's a factor that people are going to look at and should look at when it comes to the person you are going to have lead the country."

"Is he a real conservative with the social values?" Amanpour asked.

"I think that Newt has consistently put those, let's say, in the back of the bus," Santorum replied. "He's never really been an advocate of pushing those issues."

Earlier this year, Santorum also likened the the fight against abortion rights to African Americans' struggle for equality. The former Pennsylvania senator pointed to President Barack Obama's stand on the subject.

"I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'We're going to decide who are people and who are not people,'" the candidate told the Christian News Service.

"For decades certain human beings were wrongly treated as property and denied liberty in America because they were not considered persons under the constitution," Santorum wrote in a message to supporters several days later. "Today other human beings, the unborn of all races, are also wrongly treated as property and denied the right to life for the same reason; because they are not considered persons under the Constitution."