—Said tolerance of LGBTQ individuals poses a threat to America’s “moral fiber,” telling the Christian Post, “The biggest threat to biblical principles today is the failure to apply a biblical standard of maleness and femaleness.” He continued, “We are creating this illusion that there is no gender, there is no identity, and I’m blaming the Christian Church.”
—While running for the U.S. Senate, said homosexuality is “sinful.” In a questionnaire for the Associate Press, Huckabee wrote “I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.”
—Wrote that AIDS research received an unfair amount of federal money: “In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified.” He suggested such research be funded by wealthy celebrities instead of the U.S. government. “An alternative would be to request 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.”
—Said people with AIDS should be quarantined: “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…. It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is 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.”
—Led anti-gay Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis out of jail, where she was held for five days for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and staged a press conference saying, “If somebody needs to go to jail, I’m willing to go in her place.”
—Said of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, “If you don’t bow down to this really amazingly new and hastily put together definition of marriage, then does that make you a bigot? Does that make you somebody who is going to be pushed by the court and sent to jail? We’ve already seen the first person go to jail over it.”
—Challenged the Pentagon’s decision to allow transgender soldiers to serve in the military, saying, “It’s naive to think that it doesn’t affect morale. Men are men. Women are women. There’s a distinction. There’s a difference. The military should understand that and should respond to that… The purpose of the military is to train a fighting force to defend this country and to fight our battles. It’s not to fight the battles of sexual identity or orientation.”
—In response to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling wrote, “The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do—redefine marriage.… This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court’s most disastrous decisions, and they have had many. The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny.”
—Opposed same-sex marriage, civil unions, and allowing gay couples to adopt children, and equated marriage equality to drug abuse and incest: “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 to 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.”
—As a presidential candidate signed a pledge to support the “First Amendment Defense Act,” which would prohibit the federal government from “taking discriminatory action against a person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”