Huckabee’s Non Sequitur

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“Christians who themselves abandoned the primacy of lifelong marriage to follow the divorce and remarriage customs of a secular society have as much to answer for as do those who militantly push to redefine marriage,” Mike Huckabee reportedly says in his new book. Actually, there’s no contest—divorce, while sometimes necessary in light of domestic violence or unresolvable incompatibility, by its very definition renders families asunder and denies children the presence of one of their parents in the home (and, often, in their lives). Same-sex marriage creates or reinforces families and provides children with the added safety and security of two legal custodial parents.

Huckabee may be inching away from some of his worst rhetoric of the past, but he still can’t bring himself to see that gay families are not anti-family.

More. Social conservatives can always count on Mike.

12 Comments for “Huckabee’s Non Sequitur”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    “Christians who themselves abandoned the primacy of lifelong marriage …”

    I wonder if Huckabee has considered the effect of a decade-long campaign to abandon the Christian definition of marriage as “one man, one woman, for life”, replacing it with “one man, one woman”, and enshrining that definition in the constitutions of 30 +/- states. If he wants to point fingers at those responsible for “redefining marriage”, maybe he ought to point at his mirror some morning.

    I don’t get all the recent commentarian babble about Huckabee’s book “moderating” his position on marriage equality — as Greg DeAngelo pointed out, in other parts of the book, Huckabee sings the same old song about polygamy and whatnot. At best, he’s painting a smile on the pig. I’m glad you pointed it out, Stephen.

  2. posted by Houndentenor on

    How embarrassing it would be for Huckabee to say such things when in fact the divorce rate is highest in the parts of the country with the highest concentrations of Evangelical Christians. Far from inching away, Huckabee is broadening the scope of his moralizing. One wonders how long it will be until his wing of the party have alienated every voter in the country!

  3. posted by James in Chicago on

    I’ve always been under the impression that things weren’t defined a certain way until they were defined in a certain way. Was marriage defined as the union of a man and a woman exclusively before legislatures in recent years went to the trouble to define it as such? Or was this definition somewhere else and we failed to notice? Written in the sky? Not in the Bible, not that that actually matters. I can’t recall that the Bible provides a definition of anything at all. Fundies! They never were much for making any sense.

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    “The claim that same-sex marriage is destroying society is actually greatly overstated,” Huckabee reportedly concedes in the book.”

    I’d say, based on the findings of fact from the marriage equality trials, that the claim was conjured up out of nothing by conservative Christian snake oil salesmen.

    When Americans were still falling for the lie, the Huckster was all over the “same-sex marriage will destroy America” line. Now that Americans are no longer falling for it, the Huckster’s singing a different tune, trying to slide out from under, getting his fingerprints off.

    Who, exactly, does the Huckster suppose was overstating the claim all these years, if not He Himself?

  5. posted by Jorge on

    Personally I think people who have sex without getting married, then have children and still don’t get married, have more to answer for. I am not just talking about deadbeat dads.

    But you can’t say that because society’s changing.

    Wait, this is Mike Huckabee. Why am I even wasting my time with him?

  6. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    The Huckster didn’t waste any time showing his true colors, I’ll say that for him:

    ““One thing I am angry about though … is this notion of judicial supremacy, where if the court makes a decision, I hear governors and even some aspirants to the presidency say, ‘Well that’s settled, it’s the law of the land.’ No, it’s not the law of the land,” Huckabee said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

    “Constitutionally, the courts cannot make a law, they can interpret one and then the legislature has to create enabling legislation and the executive has to sign it and has to enforce it,” Huckabee added.“

    • posted by Jorge on

      The reason they’re saying that isn’t because Republican governors suddenly became stupid about constitutional law–and Huckabee knows it.

      Nya-nya-nya! Woo-woo-woo!

      The people do not have to enable, which has long been my concern. But they have. The chief executives of Republican states do not have to sign off on what the people want. But they have. The Republican governors, for all their relative silence, at least have said enough to show they understand why the people will accept and favor the court decisions. That is why it’s 80% settled.

      Huckabee understands, but he does not care. He cares more about Christianity than about Christians, and I could carry that analogy on for some length.

      By the way, your link doesn’t work, Tom.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Sorry about the link not working — here’s the correctly formatted link to the interview, and the full text of the Huckster’s statements on the issue:

        HH: So Governor, just to put a cap on that, if the Supreme Court rules 5-4 that every state must allow two people of the same sex to get married, what’s your position on the campaign trail going to be about what governors ought to do in the aftermath of that ruling, and what presidential candidates in the Republican Party ought to say about it?

        MH: Well, if the federal Supreme Court rules that same sex marriage is protected under the 14th Amendment, you still have to have Congress and the President act to agree with it, because one branch of government does not overrule the other two. This idea that a judge makes a ruling on Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning same sex marriage licenses are being given out, that’s utter nonsense, because there’s not been any agreement with the other two branches of government, so I just want people to go back to their 9th grade civics class, and remember there are three branches equal, and that all three of them have to be in concert in order for something to become law. And the courts can’t make a law, and they don’t have the power to enforce a law.

        HH: Would you counsel civil disobedience to county clerks?

        MH: Well, the point is states would be in a position that their legislatures would have to go into session. They would have to create legislation that the governor would sign. If they don’t, then there is not same sex marriage in that state. Now if the federal courts say well, you’re going to have to do it, well, then you have a confrontation. At that point, somebody has to decide is the Court right? If it is, then the legislation will be passed. It’s not unlike we’ve seen other legislation. In my own state, when we had school funding legislation that had to be passed, the courts ruled, but we didn’t start sending out checks the next day. We called a special session, we negotiated through it. The courts didn’t tell us what the formula had to look like. They just told us the one we had wasn’t Constitutional. In that case, I agree with them. They were right. We fixed it.

        HH: There’s an echo in that, though, Governor. Last night, because it was Martin Luther King day yesterday, I went and saw Selma. And the great judge, Frank Johnson, issued an order that allowed the marchers to march. And George Wallace had to get out of the way, and it’s a dramatic confrontation. There is issue here of the Supremacy Clause. Now I might not like, and I’m praying that Anthony Kennedy decides this the right way, that states have a right to define for themselves marriage. But if it goes the other way, don’t we have to follow what the Supreme Court says immediately, or aren’t we in contempt of the federal Constitution as we understand the Supremacy Clause?

        MH: But if the legislation in that state, if the law in that state does not already have a mechanism to support same sex marriage, the legislation and only the legislature can create the law that says a marriage license can be given to two men or to two women. And I think there’s going to be immediate cases filed where a person will say well, I’d like to marry two women, or I’d like to marry two men for a woman. And who’s to stop that? It’s going to be a tricky thing, but you know, when people say the law is now the law of the land and it’s settled, well, 1973, the Court ruled on Roe V. Wade, and I think it’s anything but settled. And it’s anything but something that has ended because the courts made the ruling. I think it was a terrible ruling they made in 1973. And I hope this Court realizes that this is not a decision that should be made by the judicial branch. It should be made by the legislative branch, the representatives of the people.

  7. posted by Tom Jefferson III on

    Earlier Mike Huckabee threaten to bolt the Republican Party if it “gave up” on the gay marriage issue. Sounded a wee bit like the noise that Patrick Buchanan made in the 1990s and d George C. Wallace (in the 1960s). I am not sure if he has formally backed away from that statement, but he has not been too eager to repeat it.

    Huckabee has a certain well crafted and rehearsed ‘Southern charm’, which can play well with voters.

    Racism was enough to get a significant minority of voters to back Wallace in 1967, but I am not sure that their are enough deep rooted homophobes willing to follow Huckabee to similar results in 2016.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      Especially if he’s going to continue to attack divorced people as a way of attacking gay marriage. How long until the GOP has run out of demographic groups to alienate?

    • posted by Jorge on

      Racism was enough to get a significant minority of voters to back Wallace in 1967, but I am not sure that their are enough deep rooted homophobes willing to follow Huckabee to similar results in 2016.

      Why should they? Do you think Huckabee will stand alone against gay marriage? Last year we had a candidate whose husband practiced ex-gay therapy, a candidate who told gays who want marriage to vote for someone else, and a candidate who actually condemned Lawrence v. Texas. Every single one of them at least made a pathetic attempt to convince the gay vote they noticed them. You don’t need to try to silence the gay voting bloc to be a bane to its goals. There are bound to be other socially conservative candidates who will promise the exact same things Huckabee will. I mean in no way to imply that anyone including Mike Huckabee will speak in code to anti-gay bigots.

  8. posted by Jorge on

    More. Social conservatives can always count on Mike.

    I hate to see a Catholic event attended by Cardinal Dolan sullied by the likes of Mike Huckabee, but that pales in comparison to being slandered by the likes of you.

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