After a three-way tie with fellow homophobes Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in the Iowa caucus, Surgin’ Santorum is getting ready to face the rest of the nation’s primaries. His problem: the Republicans in those states aren’t nearly as radically homophobic as Iowa’s fundamentalist nut-cases.

So now, to appear more moderate, he’s denying he ever put gay marriage and “man on child, man on dog” in the same basket of un-heterosexual abominations.

Skip ahead to about the one-minute mark in the above video and watch him squirm after CNN’s John King reads back this quote, from his now-infamous 2003 interview with the AP: “In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.” It’s no coincidence that this quote launched Dan Savage’s Google-bombing campaign against the guy.

Santorum responds, “Hold on one second, John. Read the quote. I said it’s not. I didn’t say it is. I did not connect them. I specifically excluded them.”

Okay, so maybe he meant that homosexuality is at the top of Dante’s inferno of abominations—the least ungodly!—while bestiality and pedophilia are way down at the bottom. But it’s still in that unsavory basket, a basket of actions Santorum wants to make illegal. His refusing to own that point is a convenient change for him as he attempts to be a mainstream candidate.

There’s a statistical basis for his flip-flop, too: the fact that acceptance of gay marriage has surpassed opposition to it in the past year.

Source: NYMag, Photo via Youtube