Bay Area Reporter - December 13, 2007
Lisa Keen

Most attention this week has focused on his written comment in 1992 that, "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." But he also said then that he considers homosexuality to be an "aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle." And in an interview in this month's GQ magazine, he suggests that gay marriage could lead to the end of civilization.

Huckabee is running first among eight candidates for the Republican nomination in the Iowa caucus polls, second nationally, and fourth in New Hampshire.

The comments came to light in a Dec. 6 report from People for the American Way and a Dec. 8 article by Associated Press. The PFAW report was based on information the AP dug out through a questionnaire prepared by Huckabee during his 1992 bid for a U.S. Senate seat from Arkansas. Huckabee lost that race to incumbent Dale Bumpers but went on to be elected lieutenant governor and then, in 1996, governor.

In that 1992 questionnaire, reports AP, Huckabee said, "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk. What people do in the privacy of their own lives as adults is their business. If they bring it into the public square and ask me as a taxpayer to support it or to endorse it, then it becomes a matter of public discussion and discourse."

PFAW noted that the comment came in response to a question about gays in the military, in which he also said, "I believe to try to legitimize that which is inherently illegitimate would be a disgraceful act of government."

According to AP, Huckabee complained that AIDS was "the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which 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."

Huckabee indicated he did not feel that increased federal funding for AIDS research was "justified" and suggested, instead, that "multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research."

AP said Huckabee suggested, in 2003, that the pro-gay ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down laws against same-sex sexual relations, Lawrence v. Texas, was probably right.

But in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Huckabee is among the most rigidly anti-gay of a generally anti-gay field of candidates. He opposes same-sex marriage and would have the federal constitution amended to ban it, he's against civil unions and domestic partnerships, and he's against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and hate crimes legislation including sexual orientation.

Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay Republican organization, called the HIV quarantine remarks "far outside the mainstream," noting that they did not square with the "public health standards from that time."

Huckabee appeared to be sensitive to this latter complaint, issuing a statement on the day the AP story appeared that blurred 1992 into "the late 80s and early 90s" and saying that, at that time, "we were still learning about the virus that causes AIDS."

"There was still too much confusion about HIV transmission in those early years," said Huckabee. He pointed to a 1991 case in which a 23-year-old woman, Kimberly Bergalis, testified before Congress that she had been infected by HIV while undergoing treatment from her dentist, who had HIV and who did not inform his patients of his condition.

"We now know that the virus that causes AIDS is spread differently, with a lower level of contact than with TB," said Huckabee in his December 8 statement. "But looking back almost 20 years, my concern was the uncertain risk to the general population -- if we got it wrong, many people would die needlessly. My concern was safety first, political correctness last."

An investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seemed to support the claim by Bergalis, who said she had never had sex, because the virus seemed identical to Acer's. But three years after her death, a book and a CBS report on 60 Minutes reported on evidence that called the claims of both Bergalis and the CDC into question. And PFAW points out that Huckabee's 1992 statement came four years after President Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, sent a pamphlet to 107 million U.S. households explaining that the disease could not be contracted through casual contact.

By Dec. 9 Huckabee was still feeling the heat over his AIDS remarks, and even on conservative Fox News Sunday, it was the top question.

"I didn't say that we should quarantine," said Huckabee. "I said it was the first time in public health protocols that, when we had an infectious disease and we didn't really know just how extensive and how dramatic it could be and the impact of it, that we didn't isolate the carrier...."

"I had simply made the point, and I still believe this today, that in the late 80s and early 90s, when we didn't know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about the normal public health protocols...."

Fox interviewer Chris Wallace corrected Huckabee's memory, saying, "This wasn't political correctness. The Centers for Disease Control back in 85, seven years before you made your statement, said that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact."

Huckabee tried again to use the Bergalis case, but eventually stalled out.

"Would I say things a little differently in 2007? Probably so," said Huckabee. "But I'm not going to recant or retract from the statement that I did make because, again, the point was not saying we ought to lock people up who have HIV/AIDS."

The HIV remarks struck a painful chord with one AIDS activist -- the mother of Ryan White, the young namesake of federal AIDS care legislation who died in 1990 from AIDS contracted from treatment for hemophilia.

Jeanne White-Ginder said she was alarmed to hear Huckabee's remarks about isolating people with HIV and concerned about the impression they left. The Human Rights Campaign wrote to Huckabee suggesting he meet with her. Asked about the invitation while campaigning in Iowa, Huckabee said he would be "very willing" to "meet with them" and that he would look forward to telling them "we've come a long way in research, in treatment."

Huckabee apparently did not feel pressure to mitigate his past statements concerning homosexuality, though current interview statements on homosexuality are much more tempered than those in 1992.

In an interview with GQ magazine, Huckabee said his position on same-sex marriage is "not about being against gay marriage, it's about being for traditional marriage."

"I don't think the issue's about being against gay marriage. It's about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that's important," said Huckabee. "You have to have a basic family structure. There's never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived."

When the reporter, Ross Douthat, asked Huckabee what he would say to a gay couple who wants one partner to be able to visit another in a nursing home, Huckabee said, "He can with a power of attorney."

"That's the fallacy," said Huckabee, "that this requires some new definition of marriage. It's simply not the case."

Douthat did not ask Huckabee why, then, heterosexual couples need marriage licenses from the government. But he did ask him why he's against recognizing gay relationships even as "civil unions."

"Because it really is a precursor toward marriage," said Huckabee. "Once the government says this relationship is, in essence, similar to or equal to a marriage -- we're not going to call it that, but that's what it is -- and you grant it the same basic rights as marriage, then you've effectively done it."

On NBC's Meet the Press Sun., Dec. 9, moderator Tim Russert asked Republican hopeful Rudy Giuliani what he thought of Huckabee's remarks. Giuliani said he understood Huckabee had "changed his mind" about the quarantine.

"But you don't believe that homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural or sinful," asked Russert.

"No, I don't believe it's sinful," said Giuliani. "My moral views on this come from the Catholic Church, and I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality as a way that somebody leads their life isn't sinful. It's the acts, it's the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have."

Russert started to move on to the next question when Giuliani tossed in an unsolicited comment that was a bit startling at first. He said, "Which includes me, by the way."

"Unfortunately, I've had my own sins that I've had to confess and had to deal with and try to overcome," said Giuliani, "and so I'm very, very empathetic with people. We're all imperfect human beings struggling to try to be better."

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