After Stressing His ‘Respect’ For Gay People, Huckabee Jokes That He’s Repulsed By Them
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/06/21/huck-pelosi-marriage/Earlier this year, mike-huckabeeafter being criticized for comparing gay marriage to incest and drug addiction, former Arkansas governor and current Fox News personality Mike Huckabee claimed that his statements were taken out of context and explained that he does not personally dislike gay people. “I have great respect for you,” Huckabee told Rosie O’Donnell in April. “I respect your choices. And I respect the choices that people make that aren’t my choices.”
Huckabee struck a similar note during a recent profile in the New Yorker. “I’ve had people who worked for me who are homosexuals,” he said. “And I don’t walk around thinking, Oh, I pity them so much. I accept them as who they are! It’s not like somehow their sin is so much worse than mine.”
But in that same piece, Huckabee also suggested that he is repulsed by gay relationships:
“I do believe that God created male and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the two opposite sexes,” Huckabee said in a recent New Yorker profile. “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 does deviate from Party orthodoxy on some issues. But what makes him even less predictable as a politician is his sense of humor. At times, he seems unable to resist the force of his own funniness. I joked with him once that I would write about his (fictitious) affair with Nancy Pelosi. He e-mailed back, “The only thing worse than a torrid affair with sweet, sweet Nancy would be a torrid affair with Helen Thomas. If those were my only options, I’d probably be FOR same-sex marriage!”
In his conversation with O’Donnell, however, Huckabee stressed that his opinions were informed by the bible. “I’m an Evangelical Christian, so I have a strong biblical world view, and that’s where I come. It’s not a matter of me having any kind of animosity towards anybody or any group and what people do individually, is to me, their business,” he said. “I’m not going to judge you or judge anybody else because I know there are so many loving people who are in same-sex relationships and they have adopted children and they love those kids. I’m not going to judge them. I’m simply not going there.”