Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry reportedly compared gay people to alcoholism at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday.

The moderator at the Commonwealth Club of California asked him if he considered homosexuality to be a disorder, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that,” Perry allegedly said. “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”

He also said he didn’t know if “reparative therapy” – a process meant to counsel people to change their sexual orientation – worked after an audience member asked him about the Texas Republican Party’s support of language in their platform that permits residents to seek voluntary counseling to “cure” being gay.

Perry, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in the 2012 election, is eyeing another possible presidential bid in 2016 as he serves his last term as governor.