At this week’s GOP presidential debate on CNN, Rick Santorum hailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for defying the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling, likening her to a girl who he said was killed for believing in God during the Columbine massacre. (This claim, as it turns out, is not true and the story of the girl’s death has been badly misreported.)

In an interview with Florida conservative radio host Joyce Kaufman yesterday, Santorum discussed his exchange on the topic with George Pataki and likened Kim Davis to slavery abolitionists and Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I don’t think there is any question that the Supreme Court’s decision goes against the natural law,” Santorum said. “That’s not the way nature functions. So as a result of that, I think Kim Davis and everybody else has the obligation to oppose it. Now that doesn’t mean, like Martin Luther King, you aren’t going to suffer consequences to a society who has gotten it wrong. But the only way you are going to say things is for people to start saying: ‘We are not going to comply with unjust laws.’”