Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee again expresses his anti-evolutionary thinking in this month’s GQ.
The dark horse conservative sat down with journo Ross Douthat to talk tradition – and how we gays have no place in said tradition.
GQ: Is the strategy shifting because social conservatives are losing on those core issues? Ten years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have gay marriage even in liberal Massachusetts. Now it’s there.
Huckabee: I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that’s important. You have to have a basic family structure. There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business. But when you want to redefine what family means or what marriage means, then that’s an issue that should require some serious and significant debate in the public square.
…
GQ: I just wonder what you’d say to the gay couple who says, “Well, we want to live this way, and my partner can’t come visit me in a nursing home.”Huckabee: He can with a power of attorney. That’s the fallacy, that this requires some new definition of marriage. It’s simply not the case.
GQ: So why can’t you call it a civil union?
Huckabee: Because it really is a precursor toward marriage. Once the government says this relationship is in essence similar to or equal to a marriage–we’re not going to call it that, but that’s what it is–and you grant it the same basic rights as marriage, then you’ve effectively done it.
Yeah, it would be like calling a Baptist like Huckabee’s akin to a regular old Christian: totally blasphemous, right?
ProfessorVP
I think it’s more cynicism and pragmatism than hatred. Not just Huckabee, but the others, too. Unless you say and do certain things, you can’t get the Republican nomination. Are the Democrats substantially different? Sure, different, but not substantially.
jtperkin
I never was sharp at history, but I’d love to see his scholarly citations.
Bob
He’s a clown – It’s 2007 and there is a separation of Church and State – Smarten up! – These are Civil Right – Tax, Visitation, etc – Assclown just like Dimwit Romney!- SAVE our country vote a DEM! –
monroeColby
Bottom line to support gay marriage.
Taxes.
I pay taxes like everyone else! So I should be able to marry anyone I want.
If you don’t like it, I don’t give a damn. It is my life and I hate ignorant christians!
Rowen
I agree with jtperkin. Politicos keep spouting all this nonsense about historical marriage and ancient civilizations and I want to know who’s telling them this crap. What we think of as marriage today wasn’t even solidified until about 100 years ago. Bah.
Also, powers of attorney can be contested. Wills can be contested. Legally being declared next of kin . .. well, it *can* be contested, but not easily.
Mike
Huck’s comments on gays and on religion, in the GQ article and other media, have always been creatively worded to avoid really saying anything. His response, to me, sounds more like straight people not valuing a marriage and a family as an environment to raise children.
Britney Spears has done more to cheapen marriage than any gay man ever could.
outofthelines
“There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived.”
Yeah, that’s it Huckabee. Gay Marriage killed the Dinosaurs. And caused the fall of the Roman Empire.
Gregg
Marriage has been redefined continually throughout history. Women were once property. Marriage was only about the joining of wealth and status, not love. Some of this is still true today, but to pretend that marriage was etched in stone at the beginning of time and never changed since is ignorant at best.
Greling
“He can with a power of attorney.”
Yeah, and a few thousand dollars in fees paid to an attorney to write up a document that will stand up in court.
Can’t HuckerFleeFarm see that 2 hours with the Justice of Peace and a simple $20 marriage license saves the states time and money spent in probate court and lowers the cost of health insurance by eliminating the excess paperwork required for verification of familial status?
This is discrimination. Under HuckerFleeFarm’s stance, only rich gays could afford to buy their civil rights in court.
Jack in Los Angeles
I like his comment “I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage…”
Well, hey – I’m all for traditional marriage. Happy families with a mommy, a daddy, and 2.5 kids are a great thing. I’m also very much for allowing gay people to marry. A happy family with a mommy, another mommy, and 2.5 kids is ALSO something to cheer for. Or a daddy, another daddy, and 1.76 kids.
I’m all for happy families in general. I think that the legal benefits that marriage provides will help provide stability to any family – even just a single couple with no kids. More stable families seem (just by my own observation – I’m not quoting any scientists here) to help make more stable communities.
That’s something else I’m all for.
I can’t help thinking though – that if marriage needs “protection” – the one thing that seems to destroy families faster than anything else is economic instability. A couple of basic things that the government really COULD do to “protect marriage” would be to require a basic semester course in “home finances” explaining credit cards, interest rates, and budgeting for a household… And providing protections for workers that would make it harder for an employer to fire workers indiscriminately…
Ok, so I’m dreaming. But they’re things to work for that really WOULD help “protect marriage.”
Jaroslaw
I liked the comment above about traditional marriage needing a law and thought of the following:
Lots of things are required by law and lots of things are prohibited by law. Food inspection is good example of the first one and murder and robbery are good examples of the second. Do laws guarantee anything or do they simply help to encourage good people follow their conscience? Once people’s hearts and minds change, one does not need a law.
Gregg
Jaroslaw – your comment is a bit short sighted. Marriage laws guarantee a LOT of things (property rights, inheritance rights, parenting rights, hospital visitation rights, etc, etc…). Even when hearts and minds change, we still need the law!
Jaroslaw
True, Gregg – I wasn’t trying to write a treatise – or say we don’t need any laws….I was only poking fun at the idea that regular “traditional” heterosexual marriage is so fragile that on top of all the other laws and customs, religion etc., we need to protect it from the homos, because if they get in the “game” it somehow makes marriage less desireable or whatever.
Jaroslaw
I was also trying to say that LAW is not the end all and be all. There are other factors at work in any human society……