Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee
says he opposes gay marriage, in part, because of the “ick factor,”
and that God created marriage for straight people.
A just published The
New Yorker profile on the former Baptist minister and 2012
presidential hopeful includes many of his greatest hits on why he's
opposed to being gay, giving gay and lesbian couples the right to
marry, and children being raised by gay couples.
The piece rejects Huckabee's claim that
a student journalist at the College of New Jersey “grossly
distorted” and “sensationalized” his views on gay issues. The
article plainly says, “Huckabee had not been misquoted.”
In that April interview, Huckabee drew
fire for drawing parallels between being gay to drug use, incest and
polygamy, and disagreed with gay couples raising children because
kids “are not puppies.”
“You don't go ahead and accommodate
every behavior pattern that is against the ideal,” he told the
student. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of
people who like to use drugs, so let's go ahead and accommodate those
who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we
should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy,
so we should accommodate them.”
“We should act in the best interest
of the children, not in the seeming interest of the adults,”
Huckabee said, then added, “Children are not puppies. This is not
a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?”
And for someone who says he accepts gay
people – “And I don't walk around thinking, Oh, I pity them so
much. I accept them as who they are! Its not like somehow their sin
is so much worse than mine” – he appears unable to stop himself
from speaking out against being gay.
“I do believe that God created male
and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the
two opposite sexes,” he told the magazine. “Male and female are
biologically compatible to have a relationship. We can get into the
ick factor, but the fact is two men in a relationship, two women in a
relationship, biologically, that doesn't work the same.”
Huckabee also does not believe gay men
and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the military and supports
a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual union.
According to the latest Rasmussen poll,
the socially conservative Fox News commentator is the top pick among
likely Republican primary voters for president in 2012.