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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyNovember 18th, 2008
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is our latest LaBarbera Award winner for suggesting that gays haven’t been beaten enough to earn the right to marry.
Huckabee appeared on ABC’s “The View,” where he had this exchange with host Joy Behar about same-sex marriage:
HUCKABEE: 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. I know you talked about it and I think you got into it a little bit early on. But when we’re talking about a redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights.
BEHAR: Well, segregation was an institution, too, in a way. It was right there on the books.
HUCKABEE: But here is the difference. Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge.
Huckabee appears to suggest that civil rights must meet some sort of minimum violence test. If so, then gays and lesbians certainly meet that test, all too sadly. In the most recent set of hate crime statistics released by the FBI, there were nine murders logged as hate crime incidents in 2007. Of those, five were attributed to sexual orientation, two to race, and two to ethnicity/national origin.
And that toll continues unabated this year with the murders of Lawrence King, Simmie Williams, Jr., Tony Randolph Hunter, and Angie Zapata. Just last Friday Moses “Teish” Cannon was shot and killed with a .22-caliber rifle.
It is beyond outrageous and disgusting for Huckabee to suggest that violence is a determining factor on whether any group deserves equal rights. Which is why he is now a two-time winner of the LaBarbera Award.
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Lynn David
November 18th, 2008
And a most deserving fellow he is.
Let’s not forget that for some much of that violence happens in their youth in schools. Evidently with the full institutional backing of people like NARTH, PFOX, some churches and ministries, etc….
HappyCat
November 19th, 2008
It was the Hucher that wanted to change the US constitution to reflect biblical law. Anyone who cares one little bit about this country needs to be fearful of this clown. I hope the right and republicans don’t believe they got there message across in 2008, and try to ramp it up in 2010. Keep to the far right please, pretty please.
Buffy
November 19th, 2008
Sadly Huckabee isn’t alone. I’ve lost count of how many people have made the claim that our struggle for equality and our experience is nothing like that of black people because… Then follows a long list of things we’ve never had to endure (some true, some not), how we can “pass” while others can’t, and an implied or even spoken statement that we shouldn’t have the audacity to compare our fight to the Civil Rights Movement.
It’s never been an attempt to equate ourselves with or one-up another group. And the notion of playing “my woes are worse than yours” is counterproductive at best, insulting at worst. It’s about the fact that we’re a targeted group that has faced many of the same challenges as other groups have, and like others has been engaged in a struggle for equal rights.
That some feel the need to belittle that both hurts and angers me.
AJD
November 19th, 2008
Buffy, one good rebuttal to the claim that we can “pass” is that Jews also could and often did pass, but that doesn’t invalidate the reality of anti-Semitism. (Examples include Nostradamus and Rose Zar, author of “In the Mouth of the Wolf,” the story of how she evaded capture by the Nazis by passing as Polish.)
Tara TASW
November 19th, 2008
During the campaign, I got SO sick of hearing how “likeable” Huckabee was. He compared same-sex marriage to marrying “an animal or a child.” Somehow I don’t think he’d call me “likeable” if I used those terms to describe his marriage to Janet.
He also said people with AIDS should be imprisoned (the word he used was “isolated,” but what he described was imprisonment). this was in the 1990’s, long after it was well established that AIDS is not spread by casual contact.
grantdale
November 19th, 2008
I dare Mike and Peter (replete in his ass-less leather chaps) to spend a night or two walking side-by-side down Main Street, Anywhere, USA.
Doesn’t even have to be Arkansas.
I guess Mike’s already gone blackface for a weekend — hence his sensitivity — but perhaps it’s about time he took his Life Education to a new level.
Unfortunately, I have the shivering feeling that if either Mike or Peter caught sight of themselves as gay in a mirror … they’d probably beat themselves up. And not only feel they deserved it, but get a rush of blood ‘down there’ while doing it. Double the pleasure.
Oi. What am I saying. Isn’t that the rumour about Peter in any case???
/sigh There are some sick people in this World. Most of them socially sane.
TJ McFisty
November 19th, 2008
By Huckabee’s reasoning, what have straight white men had to endure to earn their rights?
AJD
November 19th, 2008
It’s also worth noting that Huckabee has a history of associations with Reconstructionists. During the primaries, I was seriously considering registering as a Republican and voting for McCain just to keep Huckabee from becoming the GOP candidate.
The fact that he has a show on TV is scary enough, though.
a. mcewen
November 19th, 2008
I like the attention focused on our efforts but I have to ask who is out there making points besides the opposition.
I mean a day before, E. Hasselback and S. Shepard was making the same bad points. Now today its Huckabee. Other than that lovely smackdown M. Signorile gave M. Gallagher, are our people booked on programs to give our side of the issue.
homer
November 19th, 2008
I wish Huckabee would provide us with an exact count of how many homosexuals have to be killed and/or injured before we can apply for equal civil rights.
a. mcewen
November 19th, 2008
This entire comparison thing is a smokescreen. If we get roped into it, we get so busy trying compare the lgbt and a.a. civil rights movement that we take attention away from talking about basic points of our movement – i.e. marriage equality, non-discrimination laws, hate crimes legislation, etc.
Brady
November 19th, 2008
LaShawn Barber made a similar statement on her blog last week where she hypothetically called on Christians and supporters to bash gays in the streets, saying if we wanted our civil rights, we are going to have to earn them. Amazing.
RainbowPhoenix
November 19th, 2008
Isn’t this the second time Huckabee has won the LaBarbera award?
Jim Burroway
November 19th, 2008
It is indeed.
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