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January 14, 2009
Huckabee the huckster on homosexuality
Posted by: Chris
As much as Mike Huckabee wants voters to believe he is the anti-Mitt Romney -- sticking to his guns rather than shifting with the political winds -- the former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate is all over the map on homosexuality.
- As a Senate candidate in 1992, Huck said homosexuals "pose a dangerous public health threat" and called for "quarantining" people with AIDS.
- In a book he wrote in 1998, Huckabee called homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle" linked to "pedophilia, sadomasochism and necrophilia"
- In a "Meet the Press" interview as a presidential candidate in December 2007, Huckabee backed away from those earlier comments and was even noncommittal on the origins of homosexuality: "I don't know whether people are born that way. People who are gay say that they're born that way. But one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice. We may have certain tendencies, but how we behave and how we carry out our behavior."
- In a "Daily Show" appearance last month, Huck seemed to soften his views somewhat, even as he defended his opposition to gay marriage.
Now in an interview with Esquire, Huckabee offers up a new analogy to explain his views about our lives, and the result will be no less offensive to millions of gay Americans, not to mention those who know and care about us.
Huckabee says he doesn't know if homosexuality is inborn, but he believes you can control the behavior. He compares homosexuality to obesity or alcoholism: "Some people have a predisposition to alcoholism. Does that mean they're not responsible for getting drunk? No."
The analogy is ridiculous of course, since love and sex are basic human desires and needs, unlike the desire for alcohol, and he does not advocate that we simply curb our desire for sex, as the obese must do with food. (P.S. Has anyone else noticed that Huck is looking quite a bit chubbier these days?)
So long as GOP presidential hopefuls like Huckabee continue to peddle backward thinking like this that has been rejected by the majority of Americans, they are sure to turn off the very moderates they need to return to power.
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Marty on Jan 14, 2009 5:43:35 PM:
Huckabee had weight-loss surgery, I think, or at the very least lost over 100 pounds not too long ago. He should know if anyone does about how becoming obese differs from the human sex drive, et cetera. To see him gaining his weight back, albeit slowly, while sad should humble him about this "you can control your behaviors" stance of his and give him pause. I doubt it ever will, but in the meantime I continue to hope that people see how idiotic a comparison it is to being gay.