Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee,
who is considering bid for president as a Republican, on Sunday
insisted President Obama's decision to no longer defend the Defense
of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bans federal recognition of gay
marriage, could “destroy” him.
The president on Wednesday said he
believed parts of the 1996 law were unconstitutional, but added that
the government would continue to enforce the law. That is, federal
agencies are banned from recognizing the legal marriages of gay and
lesbian couples.
Huckabee reiterated his claim that the
decision “could destroy the president.”
“He alienated the African-American
community,” Huckabee
told Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace. “Overwhelmingly,
they support traditional marriages more than Hispanics and more than
whites.”
“Within the white community it's
about 56 percent, 65 percent in the Hispanic, 75 in the
African-American community.”
“I don't think that what he is doing
is constitutional. If a president begins to decide which pieces of
the law he will choose to support or endorse or enforce, based on a
lower court decision, not because it is actually bubbled up to a
final adjudication, that is an unusual precedent for a president to
take.”
When Wallace pointed out that the law
would still be enforced, Huckabee disagreed.
“It's really the same thing,”
Huckabee said. “He has decided that this is a part of the law he
doesn't like so he is not going to recognize it. I don't think a
president in the executive branch can thumb his nose at a branch of
government that is incomplete in its assessment of the law.”