Huckabee's views on gays under greater scrutiny

Old statements resurface as he rises in Iowa

While Mike Huckabee has climbed to the top of the polls in Iowa, he is in fourth place in several polls in New Hampshire. New Hampshire legalized civil unions last May. (Tony Gutierrez/associated press)

WASHINGTON - Shortly before announcing his White House bid, Mike Huckabee told a gathering of Christian conservatives that he had the toughest position against gay marriage of any Republican candidate. "Unless Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain to tell us something different, we need to keep that understanding of marriage," Huckabee said, referring to the movie about two gay cowboys.

Now, as Huckabee seeks to solidify his front-runner status in Iowa and his climb in national polls, the former Arkansas governor is coming under greater scrutiny for his views about gays and lesbians. He has sought to defend comments he made in 1992 that gays lived "an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle" and that gays with AIDS should be isolated, even though the federal government by that time had said AIDS was not spread by casual contact.

Huckabee is continuing to focus on the matter as a presidential candidate, saying on his website that "no other candidate has supported traditional marriage more consistently and steadfastly than I have. While Massachusetts was allowing homosexuals to marry, I got a constitutional amendment passed in Arkansas in 2002 defining marriage as between one man and one woman." The leading Republican candidates oppose gay marriage, although not all back a constitutional amendment banning it, and their views vary on civil unions.

In an interview with the Globe earlier this month, Huckabee said he opposes civil unions because he views them as legitimizing same-sex relationships in the eyes of the state. "When you create a validity and actually put a sort of government approval on the behavior, I think that is a different set of rules than, say, a person makes a lifestyle decision, and that's choice," Huckabee said.

Huckabee said he would not object if gay couples use a legal document such as power of attorney to establish asset transfers and other benefits he said otherwise would be created through a civil union.

"I understand if there is a same-sex couple, and again I don't personally support that, but that's their business," Huckabee said in the interview. "The power of attorney would give them a chance to visit one another at a hospital, transfer assets. There a lot of things that could be handled that don't require a civil union."

Yesterday, after enduring several days of criticism for his 1992 comments about isolating gays with AIDS, Huckabee said in a statement to the Associated Press that he would have "great regret and anxiety if I thought my comments were hurtful or in any way added to the already incredible pain that families have felt regardless of how they contracted AIDS."

He said he would be willing to meet with the family of Ryan White, an Indiana teenager who died of AIDS and whose family has objected to Huckabee's comments about AIDS. The statement stopped short of an apology sought by some AIDS activists.

The AP provided further details on Huckabee's responses to its 1992 survey, including his belief that allowing gays in the military would be "a disgraceful act of government." Huckabee also expressed his opposition to heterosexual couples living together, calling it "demeaning. . . . I reject it as an alternate lifestyle."

While Huckabee has climbed to the top of the polls in Iowa, which has a large evangelical community, he is in fourth place in several polls in New Hampshire, which is a more secular state. New Hampshire legalized civil unions last May.

Huckabee has been speaking publicly about gays for at least three decades, going back to the late 1970s, when he was the chief spokesman for the famed television evangelist James Robison. The Texas-based Robison made headlines when he said around 1980 he was sick and tired of "perverts and the liberals and leftists and the Communists coming out the closet." He said it was "time for God's people to come out of the closet, out of the churches, and change America." When Robison's comments drew fire, it was Huckabee's job to defend his boss.

Robison said in a recent interview that he long ago stopped making such comments. "I totally have become gracious and kind and I have made the statement many times, 'If you have trouble loving a homosexual, maybe you need one in your family before you can,' " Robison said.

In 1994, Huckabee was quoted in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as saying that he was disappointed that an AIDS prevention class did not stress abstinence and he noted that homosexual acts were illegal under the state's sodomy laws.

Arkansas state Representative Kathy Webb, a Little Rock Democrat who last November was elected as the first openly gay legislator in the state's history, said Huckabee "doesn't seem to have a whole lot of tolerance and good will toward gay people." She traced it to Huckabee's religious background and his effort to appeal to conservative voters.

Jay Barth, the co-author of a book on Arkansas politics, said Huckabee has toned down his rhetoric compared with his early days as lieutenant governor and governor. "In terms of public comments that are clearly derogatory toward gays and lesbians or persons with HIV/AIDS, most of those comments come early in his career," Barth said. "That is not to say he became a progressive on the issue, but he talked about them less."

On a recent New Hampshire campaign swing, Huckabee said that he would support the Bush administration's proposal to double funding for AIDS but said that he didn't want to shortchange other diseases that kill more people.

"I want to make sure that when we look at a disease, whether it is AIDS, diabetes, or cancer, we look at it from the macro perspective, and we don't just single out one thing that affects, in America, you know, about 5,000 people a year," Huckabee said.

The Centers for Disease Control reported that there were 42,514 new AIDS cases and 13,064 deaths from the disease in 2004, the most recent year for which it provided data. About 1.5 million people in the United States have been infected with the AIDS virus since 1981, resulting in more than 500,000 deaths.

Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com