Mike Huckabee presidential campaign, 2016/Gay rights

	; ; Former presidential candidate; Mike Huckabee
	Political offices: ; Former Governor of Arkansas; (1996-2007); Former Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas; (1993-1996)
	Huckabee on the issues:
	Taxes • Banking policy • Government regulations • International trade • Budgets • Agricultural subsidies • Federal assistance programs • Foreign affairs • Federalism • Healthcare • Immigration • Education • Abortion • Gay rights
	Republican candidate:
	Donald Trump
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Mike Huckabee suspended his presidential campaign on February 1, 2016.^[1]

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This page was current as of the 2016 election.

On September 8, 2015, Mike Huckabee was present to support Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses the week before, when she was released from jail. "If somebody needs to go to jail, I'm willing to go in her place," said Huckabee. Additionally, the ‘’Washington Times’’ reported on September 15, 2015, that Huckabee said putting Kim Davis in jail for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses was “criminalization of Christianity.” He continued, “She had strong conviction. This violated her basic conviction.”^[2]^[3]

In July 2015, Huckabee challenged the Pentagon’s decision to allow transgender soldiers to serve in the military. “It’s naive to think that it doesn’t affect morale. Men are men. Women are women. There’s a distinction. There’s a difference. The military should understand that and should respond to that. The military is not a social organization. The military is not a place where we try out experiments. The military is designed to kill people and break things. The purpose of the military is to train a fighting force to defend this country and to fight our battles. It’s not to fight the battles of sexual identity or orientation. It’s to fight the battles that threaten American sovereignty and American freedom,” Huckabee said.^[4]

Appearing on ABC's "This Week" on June 28, 2015, Mike Huckabee suggested conscientious objectors to same-sex marriage will engage in civil disobedience. Huckabee predicted, "They will go the path of Dr. Martin Luther King, who in his brilliant essay, the letters from a Birmingham jail, reminded us, based on what St. Augustine said, that an unjust law is no law at all. And I do think that we're going to see a lot of pastors who will have to make this tough decision."^[5]

Huckabee posted to his Facebook account on June 27, 2015, a plan to "fight an out-of-control Supreme Court." The six-point action list included passing a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman and imposing term limits on judges.^[6]^[7]

On June 26, 2015, Huckabee released a statement on his campaign website stating his opposition to the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Huckabee wrote, "The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do-redefine marriage. I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat. This ruling is not about marriage equality, it's about marriage redefinition. This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court's most disastrous decisions, and they have had many. The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny."^[8]

Huckabee filed a brief in defense of the four states’ bans on same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. According to SCOTUSblog, Huckabee's brief attempted "to show that a gay lifestyle is a threat to public health" through "data that he interprets as showing that same-sex parents are likely to die earlier than others."^[9]

According to The Huffington Post in 2010, Huckabee opposed same-sex marriage, civil unions and allowing gay couples to adopt children. He said, "You don't go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal. That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them."^[10]

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