Analysis: Reverberations for Santorum, GOP?

April 27 -- Was Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., misinterpreted in his interview with The Associated Press, in which he seemed to equate homosexual sex with bestiality and incest in the course of making an argument about sodomy laws? And will it cost him or the GOP?

Speaking on ABCNEWS This Week's weekly roundtable, ABCNEWS' Michel Martin didn't seem to think he was misinterpreted.

"The fact [is] that [Santorum had] four opportunities to clarify his point of view on this," Martin said. "The reporter asked him repeatedly whether he thought homosexuality ought to be made illegal. He wanted to waffle around it, and he came up with a classic dodge, which is, 'The press misquoted me.' It doesn't wash."

Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and an ABCNEWS commentator, said Santorum's comments were "disgraceful."

"I think it's pretty clear he meant what he said," said Zakaria, saying Santorum was "essentially stigmatizing gay people and stigmatizing their … private acts, treating them as second-class citizens."

Santorum Misinterpreted?

But ABCNEWS' George Will said Santorum's words were misinterpreted.

"Let's stipulate all anti-sodomy laws should be repealed," Will said. "He was not equating homosexuality and homosexual acts with incest and bigamy. He was saying the following: 'By what principle will you strike down, as a violation of the privacy right, consensual homosexual acts and not strike down limits on, for example, consensual bigamy, polygamy, et cetera?' "

Zakaria answered, "The year that Texas passed its anti-sodomy law, it repealed its anti-bestiality law, so current law in Texas is in the privacy of your own home, a man may have sex with a dog but not with another man, and Santorum is defending that."

Will replied, "Fareed, you cited the 1965 opinion in the Connecticut case on contraception. What the court said then was the privacy right is important because it pertains to a relationship of marriage that society values. The radicalism of Roe v. Wade in 1973 was precisely that it severed the connection between a privacy right and a relationship and made it purely a matter of individual choice."