Pretty amazing how in an age when so-called flip-flops almost always make news, Huckabee appears to be getting by without scrutiny of his latest. His only response is sort of a gee whiz, I don't know how I said that.
A comment he made in a meeting with Monitor editors in August 2006 has also drawn scrutiny. As Huckabee has risen from an asterisk to leading the polls in Iowa, the news media - and his opponents - have seized on his suggestion then that he supported state-level civil unions.
"I would tend to leave (the question of civil unions) to the state, as long as they wanted to not call it a marriage," Huckabee said in 2006. "Now if they'd call it a marriage, then I'd have a problem with it."
When he returned to the Monitor this month, he was asked to clarify his position.
"I've never supported civil unions, and I don't," Huckabee said. "I don't know, honestly, how I said what I said (in 2006) other than, 'Hey, that's something New Hampshire has to deal with.' "
Huckabee said civil unions are a "precursor to same-sex marriage." In some ways, he said, they're the same because to dissolve one, a couple would essentially divorce. Huckabee added he's not familiar with the specifics of New Hampshire's law, because he's never "been interested in a civil union myself."
That last comment is characteristic of the way Huckabee spoke about gay-rights issues during his time as governor, liberal observers said. Rita Sklar, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said Huckabee's rhetoric was often "extremely unpleasant or sarcastic."
"He is hardly ever outright nasty," Sklar said. "But he is suggestively nasty."
In 1997, six months after Huckabee became governor, the Arkansas legislature passed a law banning same-sex marriage. Huckabee supported it and put forth an amendment that said Arkansas should prohibit sodomy to protect the traditional family structure.
Comments