Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday said this week's Supreme Court rulings proved that the "death knell" of marriage was near.

In an interview with Newsmax TV, Santorum warned that two Supreme Court decisions favoring same sex marriage "should send shivers down the spine of freedom-loving Americans."

The former Pennsylvania senator reminded host Kathleen Walter that he had opposed the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling, which struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law.

At the time, Santorum had been criticized for telling The Associate Press that same sex marriage was wrong and had compared it to "man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

"I said, within ten years, we're going to see gay marriage in this country if we don't do something now," he told Walter. "The bottom line is the court has stepped in and is short-circuiting the process here."

"But if the court does what it seems obvious they're doing when they say you can't be opposed to the redefinition of marriage unless you're a hater or a bigot then it seems pretty obvious to me that that when another case comes up that they're going to establish some sort of constitutional right or find that marriage is unconstitutional in its current form," he explained. "That, to me, will put the death knell in it."

Santorum likened the latest same sex marriage rulings to Roe v. Wade, and he predicted that this was just the beginning of a long-term culture war.

"When people begin to see the consequences of the changing of the marriage laws and its impact on children, its impact on marriage and families and on civilization, I think you'll see this issue to be turned back around and go in our favor again," he insisted.

(h/t: Right Wing Watch )