Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin, the tea party-aligned primary challenger to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, has suggested legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to nuptials between a parent and child.
Bevin, who has
hammered the Senate veteran for cutting deals with Democrats and not doing enough to sink Obamacare, said gay marriage changes the definition of marriage.
"If it’s all right to have same-sex marriages, why not define a marriage — because at the end of the day, a lot of this ends up being taxes and who can visit who in the hospital and there’s other repercussions and things that come with it — so a person may want to define themselves as being married to one of their children so that they can then in fact pass on certain things to that child financially and otherwise," Bevin said on "The Janet Mefferd Show."
"Where do you draw the line?"
"Marriage has for millennia been defined as between a man and a woman, universally," he declared.
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Bevin's campaign spokeswoman Rachel Semmel called reports on the remarks a "gross misrepresentation of what Matt said,"
The Hill reported Thursday.
"He sees no comparison between gay marriage and incest," she said. "He was discussing the implications of the legal rights related to this issue such as hospital visitations and benefits. To imply otherwise is ridiculous."
The comments were first reported by
Right Wing Watch.
The Kentucky GOP primary is May 20, and gay marriage has become a hot-button issue after U.S. District Judge John Heytburn
earlier this month ruled Kentucky must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Bevin has linked Heyburn to McConnell, who
recommended him to the federal bench,
saying he was "deeply disappointed" in a ruling that represented "the type of judicial activism" that "hurts America's democratic process."
Controversial remarks have dogged other Republican candidates for the Senate, including Todd Akin, whose comments about "legitimate rape"
derailed his Missouri bid for U.S. Senate in 2012, and Richard Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer and losing GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2012,
who said during his campaign "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
The winner of the Kentucky GOP primary is expected to face Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.
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