Tony Perkins, president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC) and a possible Senate candidate, has claimed that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry will turn kids gay.

Perkins made his remarks in response to a caller's assertions during his weekly radio program, Washington Week, that the term “natural marriage,” if based on the Bible, would include polygamy.

“There's actually more of a historical basis for polygamy than there's ever been for same-sex marriage because same-sex marriage has never existed for the last ten years at best,” Perkins answered.

“Well, it's a new thing. I'll grant you that,” the caller said.

Perkins insisted that marriage equality threatens the next generation: “If it's normative and it's normal, then we would say we would want more of it, if it's beneficial.”

“People don't suddenly one day decide to become gay, you're either gay or you're not,” the caller replied. “I've never met anyone who just scratched their head and went, 'You know what, I think I'm into guys now' or 'I think I'm into girls now.' It just doesn't happen.”

When “you say heterosexual marriage is the same as homosexual marriage, then you change the curriculum in our schools and you have kids, as a natural part of growing up and developing, they're curious and they don't know, and we're exposing them to even more sexuality and overt sexual messages and we're telling them, 'Hey experiment.' And that is what lead, in many cases, to children going down a particular path, is early childhood sexual exposure, sometimes it's traumatic. And by normalizing that and mainstreaming that, what you will do is you will have more children going down that path and that's why they want to get this message into our schools,” Perkins said.

“I understand your argument, but is there any data to support that?” the caller asked.

“Well if you sexualize a culture – I can tell you the data is very clear on what's happened in the last 30 to 40 years where we have inundated young people, children, with sexual messages and they become sexually active,” Perkins answered. “So when you take and mix into that homosexuality and other forms of sexuality into that, yes they are going to move down that path, they are going to engage in what you tell them about. That is why it's problematic. That is why parents are upset about what is happening in Hawaii and other states that are teaching their kids how to engage in homosexual behavior, or heterosexual for that matter. I don't want my kids that are 11, 12 and 13 years old taught how to put on a condom or taught about how to engage in sexual behavior with someone who has HIV in a safe fashion. That is not what the schools should be about. They should be about teaching our kids to read, to write, to engage in science. How do we ever expect to compete globally when we're fixated on teaching our kids about sex?”