Rick Santorum, the GOP presidential contender who claims to have gay friends who don’t deserve rights because marriage equality is destroying the American family, now claims that the gay and lesbian community has declared a “jihad” against him.
Because, by his own admission, he’s compared same-sex marriage to incest and polygamy, even though just weeks ago he denied ever making those comparisons.
“So the gay community said, ‘He’s comparing gay sex to incest and polygamy, how dare he do this,’ and they have gone out on a, I would argue, jihad against Rick Santorum since then.”
– Santorum, at a campaign stop in Spartanburg, S.C., on Friday.
On July 29, however, in a reference back to his failed 2006 re-election campaign, the former Pennsylvania Senator denied ever comparing same-sex marriage to incest or polygamy, as accused by gay rights activist Tim Gill.
Gill was referring to this quote from an April 7, 2003 recorded interview with the Associated Press (transcript here), in which Santorum said:
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“And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
In the same conversation, Santorum also drew comparisons to pedophilia and bestiality, arguing that the “definition of marriage” has never “included homosexuality … man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.”
Santorum attracted barely 50 attendees at the Spartanburg event.
