Gomer Huckleberry: Playing Both Sides of the Pulpit
Mike Huckabee says he wants to unite the country. But in a 1998 book, Huckabee was a fierce culture warrior, equating environmentalism with pornography, homosexuality with necrophilia, and nonbelievers with evildoers.
David Corn
December 17 , 2007
At the last Republican presidential debate, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who had surged into the lead in the Iowa polls, pitched himself as the potential president who could unite a nation divided. "I think the first priority of the next president is to be a president of all the United States," he said. "We are right now a very polarized country, and that polarized country has led to a paralyzed government. We've got Democrats who fight Republicans, liberals fighting conservatives, the left fights the right. Who's fighting for this country again?...We've got to be the united people of the United States."
In the days before this debate, Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, was hit with questions regarding his past remarks and positions on religion (in 1998 he said, "I hope we...take this nation back for Christ"), on AIDS (in 1992 he proposed that people with the disease be quarantined), and on the role of women in society (in 1998 he endorsed an ad affirming the Baptist teaching that a "wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband"). And Huckabee was obviously trying to come across as a friendly and reasonable fundamentalist who eschewed the politics of division. But not too long ago, Huckabee was quite willing to be divisive. In a 1998 book decrying American culture, Huckabee was no seeker of common ground. He drew stark lines, equating environmentalists with pornographers and homosexuality with pedophilia and necrophilia. He also declared that people who do not believe in God tend to be immoral and to engage in "destructive behavior." He drew a rather harsh picture of an American society starkly split between people of faith and those of a secular bent, with the latter being a direct and immediate threat to the nation.
The book, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence, was hardly a call to come together. Huckabee wrote it with George Grant in response to the March 24, 1998, school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The book was published in early June of that year, its cover featuring a blurry photograph of a young boy pointing a gun at the reader.
(Continued here.)
David Corn
December 17 , 2007
At the last Republican presidential debate, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who had surged into the lead in the Iowa polls, pitched himself as the potential president who could unite a nation divided. "I think the first priority of the next president is to be a president of all the United States," he said. "We are right now a very polarized country, and that polarized country has led to a paralyzed government. We've got Democrats who fight Republicans, liberals fighting conservatives, the left fights the right. Who's fighting for this country again?...We've got to be the united people of the United States."
In the days before this debate, Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, was hit with questions regarding his past remarks and positions on religion (in 1998 he said, "I hope we...take this nation back for Christ"), on AIDS (in 1992 he proposed that people with the disease be quarantined), and on the role of women in society (in 1998 he endorsed an ad affirming the Baptist teaching that a "wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband"). And Huckabee was obviously trying to come across as a friendly and reasonable fundamentalist who eschewed the politics of division. But not too long ago, Huckabee was quite willing to be divisive. In a 1998 book decrying American culture, Huckabee was no seeker of common ground. He drew stark lines, equating environmentalists with pornographers and homosexuality with pedophilia and necrophilia. He also declared that people who do not believe in God tend to be immoral and to engage in "destructive behavior." He drew a rather harsh picture of an American society starkly split between people of faith and those of a secular bent, with the latter being a direct and immediate threat to the nation.
The book, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence, was hardly a call to come together. Huckabee wrote it with George Grant in response to the March 24, 1998, school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The book was published in early June of that year, its cover featuring a blurry photograph of a young boy pointing a gun at the reader.
(Continued here.)
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