Mike Huckabee - This Could Be Your Next President

Mike Huckabee, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and is a possible candidate for 2012 has said that allowing gays and lesbians to marry is as inappropriate as legalising incest, polygamy and drug use. He also condemned gays adopting saying "children are not puppies."

Mr Huckabee was speaking to journalism students at The College of New Jersey in Ewing last week in an interview that was published last night. Mr Huckabee said not all groups in society need to be accommodating if their lifestyle is outside of "the ideal."

"That would be like saying, well there's there are a lot of people who like to use drugs so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, should we accommodate them?" he said. "Why do you get to choose that two men are OK but one man and three women aren't OK?" he asked the students.

"I don't have to prove that marriage is a man and a woman in a relationship for life. They have to prove that two men can have an equally definable relationship called marriage, and somehow that that can mean the same thing."

Since the students published the transcript of the interview, Mr Huckabee released a statement saying: "I do not believe we should change the traditional definition of marriage." He said the students were sensationalising his comments as he feels his views are "well-known and hardly unusual views of same-sex marriage."

In 1992, he told the Associated Press: "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle." He called AIDS patients as "carriers of this plague," and added they should be isolated.

While Arkansas governor he said: "Marriage has historically never meant anything other than a man and a woman. It has never meant two men, two women, a man and his pet, or a man and a whole herd of pets."

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee gave an interview this week to the College of New Jersey news magazine The Perspective, and discussed several gay rights issues. Huckabee said the implementation of gays in the military would be a "social experiment". He compared gays who want to get married to drug users and polygamists. And he warned that parenting was a serious matter, suggesting that gays and lesbians who adopt were experimenting, as if with pets.

On Don't Ask, Don't Tell:

"I wouldn’t support a repeal if I were commander-in-chief...You don’t see foot soldiers out there demanding it. I’m not sure that’s the most important thing we ought to be doing for the military. ... [‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’] touches an extraordinarily small group of people. [Calls to repeal it are] primarily a posturing point for political purposes [and an attempt to] force something on the military that they themselves haven’t pushed that hard. I think we certainly should be very sensitive to the fact that the purpose of the military is not to see if we can create social experiments."

On marriage equality:

"Even civil unions are not necessary. I think there’s been a real level of being disingenuous on the part of the gay and lesbian community with their goal of civil unions...You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal. That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.'"

On gay adoption and foster care:

"I think this is not about trying to create statements for people who want to change the basic fundamental definitions of family. And always we should act in the best interest of the children, not in the seeming interest of the adults...Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?"