On Sunday, the Des Moines Register Editorial Board published excerpts from a meeting it held with Gov. Terry Branstad, specifically regarding his personal philosophy on the issue of gay marriage.

In between ducking some well-thought-out and to-the-point questions, Branstad managed to make some statements that left our heads spinning. In the course of the interview, he made some astonishingly contradictory statements, and ostensibly dismissed the legitimacy of equal rights for all Iowans.

If we had to pick an acronym to sum up our reaction to his responses, we’d pick “WTF.”

Take for example, his response to the question, “What’s your answer to Sen. Gronstal’s argument that we wouldn’t let the people vote on rights for African-Americans or for women or for religious groups?” — Gronstal’s “argument” being that civil rights trump popular will.

“That’s a different issue,” Branstad said to the Register. “Let’s take California. The same year that Obama was elected president, the first African-American elected president, not only did the people of California vote to restore one-man, one-woman marriage, which was on the ballot in California, the majority of African-Americans and other minorities also voted for that. So that’s a different issue as far as I am concerned.”

What is the basis of this argument? Is the implication that one minority group that has been wronged should be able to detect when another group is being wronged? Or is the implication that all minority groups are the same? What sound logic! “The majority” of minorities in California endorsed discrimination against ‘the gays,’ so that must make it OK — right?

But it gets better.

“Well, I want to treat everybody with fairness and equity, but I don’t think that includes meaning that people of the same sex should be able to be married,” Branstad said to the Register. “I don’t want to discriminate or treat people in an unfair manner, but this is something that is a new right, that never existed before and one certainly that a vast majority of Iowans don’t think was appropriate to be done the way it was done. I think the people of Iowa should have an opportunity to vote on that issue.”

Translation: The thought of treating everyone with “fairness and equity” is nice in theory, but I don’t actually believe in it. I’m going to say I do in one sentence, but then I’m going to contradict myself a few sentences later, because that’s ‘icky’ and my constituents don’t like it.

Usurping the civil rights of a particular minority is not something the constitution of Iowa, or any state, should endorse.

This isn’t a red or blue issue, and it has nothing to do with ends of the political spectrum or any other arbitrary criterion.

Simply disagreeing with a particular group’s lifestyle does not bestow divine prerogative to legislate against it.