Mike Huckabee warns Republicans it would be a ‘disaster’ to drop anti-gay marriage stance
Kim Davis fan and former Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has warned the Republicans not to let up opposition to same-sex marriage.
The Republican party militantly opposed the introduction of marriage equality after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of it last year.
Though hard-liners have continued to resist the ruling, moderate Republicans are attempting to push on the issue at their national convention this summer in a bid for a clean break.
The moderates have tabled an amendment to the party’s platform that would strip all references to opposing same-sex marriage – though the party would remain opposed to any federal or state non-discrimination law protecting LGBT people,
But notoriously anti-LGBT Republican Mike Huckabee – who allied with Kim Davis in his ill-fated Presidential bid – has warned against any changes.
He told Steve Malzberg: “If the party makes a substantial change on issues like life or marriage, it will be disastrous because whatever they think they gain, they’re wrong.
“What they will lose is an absolute — I think a flood tide of people will just give up on the GOP and say they’re not different than the Democrats.”
He also hit out at discrimination suits against people who refuse to serve gays, adding: “It’s happened very quickly in the United States. We really don’t know what the social consequences are.
“But to say that a person is going to be forced to accept that as a condition of opening up a business us is not ‘gay friendly’… nobody that I know of has said I will not make a cupcake for you if you’re a homosexual or I will not take a photo of you.
“What they would say is if you want me to participate in a ceremony that violates my conscience and my convictions, then all I ask is respect me, accommodate me and that’s not what’s happening.
“People are being criminalized because they refuse to accept that they just don’t agree with.”
Huckabee spent much of the past year making vaguely homophobic comments to further his bid – rallying behind Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, comparing anti-LGBT activists to Martin Luther King, labelling gay parents ‘destructive’, and ‘joking’ he wishes he were transgender to spy on teenage girls in the shower.
Despite all of his hard work, it didn’t pay off, with ‘religious right’ groups like the anti-gay National Organisation for Marriage throwing their weight behind Ted Cruz.
But he bizarrely claimed he’s too committed for religious groups to endorse, explaining: “Well, certainly a sense of disappointment, and yet I do understand because, as I’ve often said, ‘I don’t go to them, I come from them.
“Because of that I do understand them.
“A lot of them, quite frankly, I think they’re scared to death that if a guy like me got elected, I would actually do what I said I would do, and that is, I would focus on the personhood of every individual.
“We would abolish abortion based on the Fifth and 14th Amendment. We would ignore the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision.”
Claiming this would stifle fundraising for such groups, he adds: “A lot of these organizations wouldn’t have the ability to do urgent fundraising because if we slay the dragon, what dragon do they continue to fight?
“And so, for many of them, it could be a real detriment to their organization’s abilities to gin up their supporters and raise the contributions, and I know that sounds cynical but it is what it is.”
Here’s a simpler explanation, though: No one wants you to be President.
