Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee
is heading to Iowa to support an anti-gay marriage group.
Huckabee will be the keynote speaker at
a February 24 fundraiser for the Iowa
Family PAC, the political action committee managed by the Iowa
Family Policy Center Action, the state's most vociferous opponent of
gay marriage.
The committee says it supports
Christians who are “God-first” candidates. It has
enthusiastically endorsed Bob Vander Plaats' candidacy for governor.
While all Republican Iowa gubernatorial
candidates have sided with social conservatives who are rankled at
Democratic leaders for blocking a resolution calling for an amendment
in the Iowa constitution that would ban gay marriage and reverse last
year's state Supreme Court order legalizing the institution, Vander
Plaats, who often speaks about the issue at anti-gay marriage
rallies, has a padlock on the issue. He's pledged, if elected, to
halt gay weddings with an executive order until the issue is decided
by voters. Most analysts have said such a move would not be legal.
Huckabee is the presidential choice of
social conservatives who attended September's Value Voters Summit,
the annual conservative meet up sponsored by the Family Research
Council (FRC), an ardent opponent of gay and lesbian rights.
Surprisingly, former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice
presidential candidate Sarah Palin trailed in fourth place.
The former Baptist minister does not
believe gays should be allowed to serve in the military and supports
a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual union.
In November, he told CBS' Katie Couric
that if you alter marriage to include gay couples “then there is
really no limit” to how it might be defined and suggested polygamy
would soon follow.
“Can we change it to multiple
spouses?” he rhetorically asked. “If not, why not? You know, I
hear people say, 'Well, what would be wrong?' What would be wrong,
then, with a man having two or three or six or seven wives? Or a
woman having six or seven husbands all at the same time?”
“If enough people believe that we
should have – I'll just use the illustration of polygamy – then
we should accommodate that. Otherwise, are we being just as bigoted
and intolerant and lacking compassion 'cause we don't promote and
accept and put a sanction on polygamy?” he asked. “I don't think
so.”