During an appearance on WHP-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett compared gay people marrying to siblings marrying, according to NBC 10.
The governor made his comment in the state's capital after a news anchor asked him about a previous remark he made, comparing gay people getting married to children getting married.
"It was an inappropriate analogy, you know," Corbett said. "I think a much better analogy would have been brother and sister, don't you?"
The conservative governor added he does not believe the federal courts have a role to play in a challenge to Pennsylvania's same-sex marriage ban.
"The Supreme Court left it up to the states to determine under their laws as to what is and isn't a marriage," Corbett said. "The federal court shouldn't even be involved in this. But if they say they are, then they're going to make a determination whether the state has the right to determine that a marriage is only between a man and a woman and not between two individuals of the same sex."
In August, lawyers for Corbett wrote that same-sex relationships have "no validity" as they attempted to block marriage licenses from being issued to gay couples.
"Had the clerk issued marriage licenses to 12-year-olds in violation of state law, would anyone seriously contend that each 12-year-old... is entitled to a hearing on the validity of his 'license'?" the lawyers wrote. "This case is about one thing: whether a local official may willfully disregard a statute based on his personal legal opinion that the statute is unconstitutional."
After Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Haines began handing out marriage licenses to gay couples in a Philadelphia suburb, he was sued by the health department under Corbett who claimed the current ban on gay marriage in the state prevented him from handing them out.
Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pellegrini ruled in favor of the health department, saying Haines did not have the authority to issue marriage licenses unless gay marriage was legalized in the state.
