Esquire covers Huckabee's shameless anti-gay bile on his book tour

Failed GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is still on the media circuit, this time he is covered by A.J. Jacobs in a feature piece for Esquire, as the writer says, "flogging his new book ("Do the Right Thing") on a 56-city tour." Jacobs describes the very qualities that make Huckabee dangerous - he's a likeable bigot.

He's a four-star general in the battle against gay marriage. He's fervently pro-life and is dubious about Darwinism. He disciplined his kids with corporal punishment and he loves his guns. And yet, when you're with him, he's so damn folksy and kind and self-deprecating that the liberal media (i.e., me) just want to hug him.

And thus this is why we see lazy media types (with the notable exception of Jon Stewart) often cut the affable former minister and covenant marriage advocate way too much slack instead of holding him accountable for his views.

But thankfully, Huck hurtles over the edge with Jacobs, yet again raising the comparison of same-sex marriage to alcoholism and leading down the slippery slope to marrying sheep:

He tells me that when he spoke recently in Japan, there was an American student there who objected to his views on gay marriage. "This was right in the middle of what was going on in west Texas, and I thought, Okay, how can we say that what those polygamists in west Texas are doing is wrong if we allow same-sex marriage? Who are you to tell them that that man can't have fifteen wives? [The student said] 'Well, it's not the same!' And I said, 'Okay, well, here's another one: bestiality. Now I know you're going to have a problem,' and he just went berserk on that. But there was recently an actual news story where a man wanted to marry his animal....I think it was a sheep."

Huckabee says he doesn't know if homosexuality is inborn, but he believes you can control the behavior. He compares homosexuality to obesity or alcoholism: "Some people have a predisposition to alcoholism. Does that mean they're not responsible for getting drunk? No."

On the bestiality matter, Huckabee is an intelligent man - how can he continue saying this crap when he knows full well an animal cannot give consent or sign a legal document? This only makes him look like a jackass (not that I mind); you'd think he and his ilk would drop this argument from their arsenals of anti-gay propaganda.

More below the fold. And Huck continues churning out the homophobia, reinforcing the belief that civil rights is a zero-sum game.

I give him the liberal line: Being gay is so integral to a person's identity that it's not a choice, that it's like being African-American.

"I'm especially offended by that," he answers immediately. "Because blackness is an inescapable quality. Black is not a behavior. There's no behavior to black. What you can say is that whatever disposition, it's a choice. A lot of people are celibate. When people enter the priesthood, they make a choice to subjugate certain behaviors and/or feelings. It's not that they don't have them; it's that they choose not to act on them."

Well, we know that doesn't always work out so well, Huck. Ask Papa Ratzi and his pedophiles, rapists and enablers of the cloth.

You should read the rest of this article. There is a hilarious section where Jacobs accompanies Huck to a fundie dinner of 600 true believers, with a theme of "no compromise on gay marriage". The poor writer subjects himself to the kind of sh*t we discuss here on the Blend all the time. It sounds like he was traumatized by this winner:

A man in a black suit and orange tie gets up. I all but rub my eyes to make sure it's not a mirage. The man has my gaydar going nuts, beeping at Nathan Lane levels.

The woman next to me in the flower-print dress leans over and says, "He's ex-gay." He used to work for gay rights in Washington before seeing the light.

The ex-gay speaker says the same-sex marriage advocates "just don't get it. We won in California. Nanny-nanny pooh-pooh!"

BONUS: Here's a classic Huck campaign flashback for you; I guess we'll see more of this in 2012 -- the good pastor tells a rally to shove a pole up the posterior of anyone who has a problem with the Confederate battle flag:

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your [Confederate] flag. If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole. That's what we'd do."

-- Baptist minister and GOP clown car occupant Mike Huckabee, showing his pious side as he rallied and pandered to The Base at a Myrtle Beach crowd this month.

Related:

* The Mike Huckabee Blend files

* Jon Stewart slays the homophobic Huckabeast without breaking a sweat

* Transcript: Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee Discuss Gay Marriage