From The Politico:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, surging in Iowa polls in the Republican presidential race, wrote on a questionnaire while running for U.S. Senate in 1992 that homosexuality is “aberrant” and “sinful.”

“I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk,” Huckabee wrote in the questionnaire for The Associated Press, which reported the answer on Saturday.

The media and pundits have largely credited Huckabee’s amazing surge in Iowa polls to his appeal to evangelical Christians.  Last time I checked, these individuals are very Biblically oriented and the Bible doesn’t exactly speak favorably of homosexuality, although I think modern Christians blow what text is dedicated to the subject way out of proportion.  So why exactly should the revelation that Huckabee, who is a Baptist preacher after all, thinks (or thought) that homosexuality is sinful harm him?  It will put off some voters in the general election (cart, horse), but I don’t see it costing him a lot of GOP primary voters.  In fact, it might even benefit him in the primary.  In case you weren’t paying attention the GOP isn’t the most gay friendly party in the country and has staked many an election over the past few years to the wedge issue of gay marriage.

In another answer that could damage his standing in the presidential race, Huckabee wrote on the questionnaire that AIDS research was receiving an unfair amount of federal money. Instead, he said celebrities should pay for the research themselves.

“In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified,” Huckabee wrote, according to the AP.

“An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research.”

Again, I don’t see this harming him all that much.  Although it is most certainly not always the case, many people in this country view AIDS as a disease of homosexuality or drug use - both of which are considered deviant by those same evangelicals.

I actually share Huckabee’s ultimate conclusion on this point, although for substantially different reasons.  It isn’t the federal government’s place to use taxpayer funding to fight an illness or to conduct other such medical research best left to the private sector.  Same goes for embryonic stem cell funding.  Additionally, the fact that nearly all cases of HIV are contracted as a direct result of the behavior (read: poor choices) of the afflicted person (there are rare exceptions like blood transfusion errors) makes it is even harder to justify federal funding.

Huckabee also wrote that he wanted to quarantine AIDS patients, according to the AP:

“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague…. It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”

It would be interesting to hear what his response to the same question is today.  Granted I was a wee little lad at the time, but as I recall there was not widespread understanding among the public about exactly how HIV was and was not transmitted.  Opinions like the one Huckabee had were not altogether rare.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Politics, Social Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.