Former Arkansas Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee made an appearance on CNN's State of the Union this morning where Dana Bash asked him about the conflict between his religious beliefs regarding homosexuality (he has called it "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle") and the "gay friends" he claims to have.
Said Huckabee:
"People can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle. I don't shut people out of my circle or out of my life because they have a different point of view. I don't drink alcohol, but gosh — a lot of my friends, maybe most of them, do. You know, I don't use profanity, but believe me, I've got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera — it's not my cup of tea."
Huckabee then made a few remarks propping up the far-right's new signature meme – that it is not gay people who are being disenfranchised when businesses refuse to serve them, it's the religious business owners who are the victims:
"I'd like to think that there's room in America for people who have different points of view without screaming and shouting and wanting to shut their businesses down. What worries me in this new environment we're in, it's not just that someone might disagree. They don't want to argue with me, even take a different point of view. They want to close someone's business down. Put them in an economic position of disenfranchisement."
Finally, Huckabee said his point of view is never changing:
"For me, as it was for President Obama in 2008, this is not just a political issue. It is a biblical issue. And as a biblical issue — unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it's really not my place to say, okay, I'm just going to evolve. It's like asking someone who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don't want to do that. I mean, we're not going to do that. Or like asking a Muslim to serve up something that is offensive to him, or to have dogs in his backyard. We're so sensitive to make sure we don't offend certain religions, but then we act like Christians can't have the convictions that they've had for 2,000 years."
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
