Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee
has dismissed criticism over comments he made earlier this year
against transgender people, saying that voters are not focused on the
issue.
During a National Religious
Broadcasters convention in February, Huckabee joked that he wishes he
had thought to claim he was a transgender woman in high school to
gain access to the girls' locker room.
“Wish that someone told me that when
I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came
time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee said. “I'm pretty sure
that I would have found my feminine side and said, 'Coach, I think
I'd rather shower with the girls today.'”
Huckabee also suggested that
transgender people are a threat to society.
“For those who do not think that we
are under threat, simply recognize that the fact that we are now in
city after city watching ordinances say that your 7-year-old
daughter, if she goes into the restroom, cannot be offended, and you
can't be offended, if she's greeted there by a 42-year-old man who
feels more like a woman than he does a man,” he said.
BuzzFeed brought attention to the
comments on Tuesday, a day after the debut of Caitlyn Jenner,
formerly Bruce Jenner.
(Related: Caitlyn
Jenner, formerly Bruce: Vanity
Fair
cover frees me.)
Huckabee, whose campaign for the
Republican presidential campaign is mostly based on social issues,
said that the only people focused on the comments were the media.
“What people talk to me about is not
some speech I made four months ago, and it's not some cultural
issue,” he told reporters in Little Rock, Arkansas. “People talk
to me about the loss of their job, they talk to me about the threats
to this country, and that's what I'm focused on. It's why I'm
running for president. It's not to entertain the masses with
comments on the culture news of the day.”