Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Matt Bevin suggested that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalizing marriage between a parent and child.
The comments by Bevin, who is running in the Republican primary against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), were made on The Janet Mefferd Show on Wednesday and highlighted by Right Wing Watch.
“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 repressions 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. “Where do you draw the line?”
Bevin’s campaign said he was merely talking about the legal rights related to hospital visitations.
“This is a gross misrepresentation of what Matt said,” Bevin spokeswoman
Rachel Semmel said in a statement. “He sees no comparison between gay
marriage and incest. He was discussing the implications of the legal
rights related to this issue such as hospital visitations and benefits.
To imply otherwise is ridiculous.”
Bevin’s comments came a few days after he slammed McConnell in response to a judge ruled that Kentucky must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. McConnell recommended the judge, U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II, to the federal bench in the early 1990s.
This post was updated.