Rick Perry appeared on the NBC News financial network CNBC this morning and was roundly berated for his anti-gay comments last week. The Texas Republican governor had compared homosexuality to alcoholism — not the first time he’s made that analogy — and was forced to defend his remarks comparing homosexuality to alcoholism before conservative “Squawk Box†co-host Joe Kernen.
“I have a really high bar for what I would take offense to,†Kernen told Perry. “But that would exceed the bar for me on being an offensive comment. I don’t think gay marriage leads to cirrhosis of the liver or domestic violence or DWIs. I don’t see how that’s similar.â€
In fact, Perry last week told a San Francisco audience that he sees “the homosexual issue†just like he sees alcoholism.
Gov. Perry responded to Kernen’s classification of his comments as “offensive†— and tried to change the focus of his anti-gay comments to an issue of “states’ rights.â€
PERRY: “The interesting thing for me is that this conversation has always been about the states’ rights to make decisions on this host of issues. And the idea that somehow or another Washington should be given total and full ability to make –
KERNEN: I get that. But in terms of changing the behavior of someone, I don’t think — you wouldn’t think that someone who’s heterosexual, that you couldn’t change them into a homosexual or someone who is homosexual, you don’t think that there should be therapy to try to change them into a heterosexual?
PERRY: You know, I don’t know. The fact is, we’ll leave that to the psychologists and the doctors.
KERNEN: The psychologists — they’ve already weighed in. They’ve dismissed the idea that sexual orientation is a mental disorder. And they’ve told their mental health professionals to avoid telling clients that you can change your sexual orientation – I was thinking for us, conservative, if I could change big government, high tax progressives into fiscally — that’s where I would work.
[Bolding ours]
Kernen was not about to back down or leave thew conversation there.
KERNEN: If you were to run again, you would not — there are upstanding gay couples, good citizens that are good parents, that — and you would agree with that. And these are people that are going to be with us forever. Just seems like the Republican party is going to be forever behind the curve on issues like this, and it doesn’t help the party win elections.
But Perry was not about to back down either.
PERRY: I don’t necessarily condone that lifestyle. I don’t condemn it, either. We’re all children of god. And the fact is that people will decide where they want to live, if Washington will respect the Tenth Amendment. And I think that will make America substantially happier.
The Texas governor didn’t mention the Fourteenth Amendment, which in every federal court case since DOMA was declared unconstitutional last year, has been used to strike down state marriage bans.
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