Despite a large outcry, Mike Huckabee is not apologizing for saying he disagrees with gay and lesbian couples raising children because they “are not puppies.”

Huckabee made his remarks last week in a wide-ranging interview with The Perspective, a publication of the College of New Jersey. He also reiterated his opposition to being gay, drawing parallels to drug use, incest and polygamy.

“You don't go ahead and accommodate every behavior pattern that is against the ideal,” he said. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let's go ahead and accommodate those who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

But the Fox News commentator and possible 2012 presidential nominee drew the most criticism for his remarks about gay adoption.

On that issue, Huckabee told the paper that he sided with an Arkansas law that outlaws unmarried couples from adopting children in a state that bans gay marriage, effectively banning adoption by gay couples. (Calling the law unconstitutional, a judge struck it down last week.)

“We should act in the best interest of the children, not in the seeming interest of the adults,” he said, then added, “Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?”

During an interview Wednesday with Rosie O'Donnell, Huckabee reeled back his remarks a bit, but refused to apologize.

“The point that I have tried to make is, I think the ideal is traditional marriage,” he said. “Man, woman raising children that they're created and we don't always have the ideal.”

O'Donnell, who is openly gay and raising four children, persisted: “And does that preclude gay families in your mind?”

“Well, you know Rosie, again, I think people have to make their own decision about what a family ought to look like and I'm not going to judge you or judge anybody else because I know there are so many loving people who are in same-sex relationships and they have adopted children and they love those kids. I'm not going to judge them.”

But when Rosie asked whether his preference would be that a child remain in foster care rather than being placed with a gay family, the 54-year-old former Baptist minister sidestepped the question.

“No, that's a choice that each state is going to make according to the laws of that state,” he said, then added: “I have no doubt that you don't have love and affection and total devotion to your children.”

Huckabee's comments drew widespread criticism and calls for an apology.

“You owe the millions of gay and lesbian families in this country an apology,” openly gay presidential hopeful Fred Karger wrote in an Huffington Post blog entry.

But this is not the first time Huckabee has attacked gay couples.

Last November, Huckabee told Katie Couric that if you alter marriage to include gay couples “then there is really no limit” to how it might be defined and suggested polygamy would soon follow.

Huckabee is the presidential choice of social conservatives who attended last year's Value Voters Summit, the annual conservative meet up sponsored by the Family Research Council (FRC), an ardent opponent of gay and lesbian rights.