Possible Republican presidential
candidate Mike Huckabee recently told televangelist Jim Bakker that
gay rights opponents have allowed “ourselves to be called
homophobic or bigoted, we're not.”
As Right Wing Watch points out,
Huckabee once called homosexuality “an
aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” and demanded that the
government quarantine
people who test positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
More recently, Huckabee criticized
governors who “surrendered” to court rulings striking down
gay marriage bans.
“The way that we've allowed words
like tolerance, bigotry – what has happened to us, we allow
ourselves to be called homophobic or bigoted, we're not,” Huckabee
told Bakker in a segment promoting the former governor's latest book,
God,
Guns, Grit and Gravy.
“We are just
people who believe that there is a standard that was not ours, it was
God's, it was given to us and for us to change it we have to get his
permission,” he added.
Bakker
agreed: “We're not trying to outlaw anybody, we're not trying
to cut back anybody, all we're saying is, we want to believe the word
[of] the Bible that we believe to be the word of the living God.”