Do You Want Someone Like This to be President?

How would you like it if the President of the United States had said this:

"I agree with the leadership of our military, who believe it is not in the best interest of the armed forces to have homosexuals serving on active duty," he said at the time. "I believe to try to legitimize that which is inherently illegitimate would be a disgraceful act of government. I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

Don't care much for that? Then you'll just hate this quote about HIV from the same person:

"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," Huckabee said during the same interview. "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. 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."

Both of these quotes are attributed to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee by the organization People for the American Way and reported by PageOneQ. To be fair, both of these quotes go back to 1992, but as naive as I was to GLBT issues back then, I still new better than that, and I hardly consider myself qualified to be president, then or now.

Neither is Mike Huckabee, yet he is moving up in most polls among Republican candiates, which says a lot (none of it good) about the right wing of the party, which is apparently still breathing.

A judgemental, pious homophobe can't get elected president, can he? At least not again?

Here is more on Huckabee from the PFAW. It doesn't get any prettier.