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Huckabee: Touring the Spectrum of Wingnut Insanity
Posted by KTK

Mike Huckabee is catching more-than-deserved flak for his history of Medieval remarks about gays, women, AIDS, and the usual range of winger obsessions. Today, his oppo research director - Lean Left protege Joe Carter, of Evangelical Outpost - tried to “clarify” Huckabee’s position on . . . (wait for it) . . . homosexuality and necrophilia. Because, when you’re Mike Huckabee, you need a position on homosexuality and necrophilia. And when you’re Joe Carter, you’re ready to provide one.

Wingery aside, Joe is a great blogger. But running a campaign for the Presidency is a whole different ballgame - and, as usual, Huckabee’s simply not warmed up. Joe and Huckabee are both discovering that the world outside their evangelical echo chamber is populated by people who expect you to have reasons for the things you say, and who tend to notice when you’re crazy. The results weren’t pretty.

First, Huckabee’s lunacy, loud and proud:

It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.

[Huckabee, Kids Who Kill, 1998]

Ignoring the fact that Huckabee apparently considers himself an expert on youth violence - and regards it as somehow related to “institutionally supported aberrations” consisting entirely of forms of sex he doesn’t approve of (there are institutions for necrophilia?) - Greg Sargent at TPM focused on the more relevant implications, asking Joe Carter to explain just what Huckabee was saying about gays:

“He’s not equating homosexuality with necrophilia,” Carter told us. “He’s saying there’s a range of aberrant behavior. He considers homosexuality aberrant, but that’s at one end of the spectrum. Necrophilia is at the other end.”

“No way is he saying that homosexuality is like having sex with dead people. That’s not it at all.”

Asked how one measured what rated where on this spectrum of aberrant behavior, Carter said: “He was talking about aberrant sexual behavior. Sadomasochism and necrophilia are on the further end of the spectrum.”

Asked if this meant that Huckabee at least saw homosexuality and necrophilia as belonging to the same behavioral category, Carter said:

“That’s like saying any sex is the same. Yes, he considers both aberrant, but no, he does not equate the two in any way.”

Asked to elaborate further, Carter said: “He was describing behavior. He’s not casting judgment on the people themselves. His point is, the culture is becoming more accepting of aberrant behaviors.”

Asked about an even harsher description of homosexuality — back in 1992 Huckabee described it as not just “aberrant,” but an “unnatural, and sinful lifestyle” — Carter said Huckabee stood by it.

“He’s not going to change his stance on that,” Carter said. “He considers homosexual behavior aberrant. But there are degrees of aberrant behavior. He’s not saying they’re equally as bad. There’s a very big distinction there.”

It’s hard to make sense of this: homosexuality and necrophilia are at “opposite ends” of a “spectrum”? What kind of spectrum is that? What’s in the middle? Sex with comatose transvestites? (Kinda dead! Kinda gay! But not really!) The same issue arises in assigning “degrees of aberrant behavior”: how are these degrees measured? What “degree” is homosexuality? What degree is necrophilia? What degree can you get to before you need glasses?

Of course it doesn’t make sense. The great thing about being a conservative, and the more so a religious conservative, is that you are absolutely and entirely forgiven any obligation to say things that are true or even meaningful. I gather that what Joe was trying to say is that being gay and being necrophiliac are both wrong for different reasons; that he kept putting it in explicitly quantitative terms is beside the point. We can kind of infer that he was drawing some sort of a distinction; that’s as literal as you can ask anyone on the religious right to be.

But Joe was masterly in both re-asserting Huckabee’s nonsense with a straight face, and diverting the conversation away from any defense of the reasons for which he would say such bizarre things. While insisting that Huckabee would never compare homosexuality and necrophilia, he managed to contrast them at least half a dozen times, and explicitly called homosexuality “aberrant” seven times. But he was never asked to defend Huckabee’s basic position - that homosexuality is “aberrant” and deserves condemnation in the same way as pedophilia or necrophilia. In this, Huckabee’s (and Carter’s) craziness is its own defense: people are so aghast at the ridiculous way he expresses himself that there’s no time left to be offended by the bigotry alone.

In this case, though, the dog-whistle was too loud. Conservatives got the message loud and clear, but so did everyone else: whether it’s as parts of a “spectrum” or as polymorphously independent “aberrations”, Huckabee is well on board with the standard anti-gay bigotry of the Christian right, and happy to work it into the same sentences with actual sexual violations that anyone would be disgusted by. Neither he nor Carter may have any notion how to make that sound not-crazy, but both are certain they’re not going to stop saying it. Only this time, they’ve been heard too well, and when the confusion over what Huckabee said dies down, people are going to wonder why he said it, and what that says about him.

December 18th, 2007 General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, Media, News & Current Events | 5 comments