Wouldn't an answer consistent with Scripture and his denomination be a bit less than surprising?

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.

I guess I'm surprised that anybody is surprised. Believing homosexual activity to be sinful is pretty mainstream thinking among Christians -- at least among those who still grant some level of authority to the Bible -- and so why woulndn't he hold such a view. As for "aberrant" and "unnatural", when one considers that the primary purpose of sexual conduct is reproduction, one can certainly make a case for both of those terms as fitting homosexuality. They may be a bit strong to have put on that questionnaire, but that doesn't make the beliefs particularly shocking to me. it is really pretty mainstream Baptist teaching, and to expect Huckabee to hold anything different is indicative of lazy thinking.

Then there is this.

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."

Frankly, I find this answer to be even less troubling than the first. I've always been struck by the hypocrisy of super-rich celebrities insisting that the government tax the common man more to pay for their pet causes while giving little more than pocket change for these same causes. And such celebrities and their pressure does warp our spending priorities -- given the number of men afflicted with prostate cancer and the number of women who suffer from breast cancer, is the research funding roughly equivalent on a per-patient basis? No, because one of those diseases has celebrity spokespeople pushing for greater spending on research, while the other does not. The same argument could be made regarding AIDS, and I believe that is the one Huckabee is making in that statement.

More troubling is this one.

"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."

That one does sound much more harsh -- though he is making a point that many folks did in 1992, when this was written. We've historically quarantined folks with such deadly communicable illnesses -- typhoid, tuberculosis, and other deadly diseases. The difference, of course, is that AIDS is less communicable and transmission can be avoided through simple precautions. A dear friend has been HIV-positive for over two decades and continues to be in great health -- and not one of us straight men and women who are his friends have contracted the virus because he and we are all conscious of what to do to avoid transmission.

This survey may be a difficult one for Huckabee to overcome, though I can't help but wonder if his views have shifted at all over time. It would be really interesting to hear his answers to the second two questions again, as i expect some evolution may have happened after a decade as governor.

Posted by: Greg at 08:16 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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