Huckabee: 'I Don’t Know' If People Are 'Born' Gay, But It’s a 'Choice' to Act Gay [VIDEO]

Posted by Matt Corley, Think Progress at 6:27 AM on December 31, 2007.

On NBC's Meet The Press this morning, host Tim Russert asked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee if he believed "people are born gay or choose to be gay?" "I don't know whether people are born that way," responded Huckabee, "but one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice."

Huckabee conceded that "people who are gay say that they're born that way," but added that he believed that "how we behave and how we carry out that behavior" is more important. Watch it to your right:

As ThinkProgress has noted before, Huckabee has a record of using the power of government to discriminate against the choices that gay Americans make in their private lives. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee pushed to strengthen the state's anti-sodomy laws in order to "protect the traditional family structure":

In 1997, Huckabee requested an amendment to a state Senate bill stating "that it is Arkansas public policy to prohibit sodomy to protect the traditional family structure." [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 1/23/1997]

Huckabee is also fervent in his efforts to deny gay men and women the right to choose to marry the ones they love. Recently, he told GQ that "civilization" may not survive if "what marriage and family means" is "rewritten" to allow gay marriage.

Russert also pressed Huckabee on his comparison of homosexuality to necrophilia, which he described as "publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations." Huckabee claimed that he was not saying they were "equivalent," but was only "pointing out" that they "are deviations from what has been the traditional concept of sexual behavior."

Tagged as: gay rights, homophobia, huckabee

Matt Corley is a Research Associate for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.