Republican presidential candidate Mike
Huckabee on Tuesday volunteered to take Kentucky clerk Kim Davis'
place in jail.
Davis, the elected clerk of Rowan
County, was freed from jail on Tuesday after serving five days for
refusing to comply with a federal judge's ruling ordering her to
issue marriage licenses to all qualified couples. Davis, an
Apostolic Christian, has said that issuing marriage licenses to gay
and lesbian couples would be a violation of her conscience.
(Related: Kim
Davis won't say whether she'll abide by order in gay marriage
dispute.)
Speaking at a rally in support of
Davis, Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said that he is
willing to spend eight years in jail.
“I have a message for the judge,”
Huckabee told the crowd, “and I say this with all my heart: If this
judge believes that somebody must be put in jail because a person is
willing to stand on the biblical definition of marriage ... Let Kim
go, but if you have to put someone in jail, I volunteer to go. Let
me go. Lock me up if you think that's how freedom is best served.”
“I am willing to spend the next eight
years in the White House leading this country, but I want you to
know, I'm willing to spend the next eight years in jail but I'm not
willing to spend one day under the tyranny of people who believe they
can take our freedom and conscience away!”
During a television interview over the
weekend, Huckabee sided with Davis, saying that she
was fighting “judicial tyranny.”