Creep of the Week: Mike Huckabee

It's never too soon for 2008 presidential also-rans to begin running again, and that's just what ultra conservative Republican Mike Huckabee seems to be doing as we speak.
On Nov. 18 Huckabee appeared on The View crowing about how proud he is of America for electing a black guy. "For us to stand there that day and to see Barack Obama taking the stage, to realize 50 years ago, he couldn't have served coffee in the White House and now he'll be the resident of the White House, we have to be happy as Americans," Huckabee said (never mind that he apparently can't wait to try to oust Obama in four years).
Then Joy Behar asked if Huckabee is as passionate about gay rights.
"It's a different set of rights. People who are homosexuals should have every right in terms of their civil rights, to be employed, to do anything they want. But that's not really the issue," he said.
Of course it's not. After all, framing the issue of gay rights in terms of basic fairness really diffuses the matter.
Note that Huckabee said that gays should have "every right … to do anything they want." Woah there, buddy. No wonder the right keeps parroting that "no special rights" mantra. Granted, I want to see LGBT folks become full citizens under the law, but I still think we should have to obey stop signs and pay taxes. Perhaps that makes me a conservative at heart.
"But when we're talking about a redefinition of an institution, that's different than individual civil rights," Huckabee continued.
Behar wasn't buying it. "Well, segregation was an institution, too, in a way," she said. "It was right there on the books."
"But here is the difference," Huckabee responded. "Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge."
When Behar points out that gay bashing goes on, too, Huckabee counters with, "And there is Christian bashing," as if that evens everything out. An eye for an eye, perhaps?
"Violence is wrong no matter who is behind it," Huckabee said, and while this is true, it does seem that Huckabee is, at best, incredibly naive.
"To suggest that a civil rights movement must meet some sort of violence threshold is an incredibly dangerous argument — not to mention blind to the serious violence gay people have already suffered," said Ali Frick of Think Progress.
Perhaps it's because I attended the Transgender Day of Remembrance ceremony in Detroit, last week, but I find Huckabee's statement offensive to say the least. Perhaps Huckabee needs to attend next year's ceremony for a reality check. Then again, being in a room full of grieving trans folk would probably make his head explode or at least cause him to start stress eating.
As if this wasn't enough, Huckabee also claimed during an interview with Bill Bennett that California's Prop. 8 didn't ban same-sex marriage.
"I refuse to use the term, 'ban same-sex marriage.' That's not what those efforts did. They affirmed what [marriage] is. They did not prohibit something. They simply affirmed that which already has and forever has existed," he said.
See? It's just an issue of semantics. Never mind that the actual wording of Prop. 8 read: "eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry" and took away the already granted right for same-sex couples to marry. But hey, it's not a right if it belongs to gays, right Huckster?