In Which I Take a Look at How Absurdly Stupid Huckabee's "Reasonable-Sounding" Position on Same-Sex Marriage Really Is

I know, more Huckabee—but it's not my fault that his tiresome ass is all over the news today. Blame the media and their inexplicable fascination with promoting yet another aw-shucksing god-botherer, 'cuz that crush panned out great the last time around.

Anyway, GQ has published an interview with the man o' the hour, and while it is a virtual treasure trove of material (his wanting to give Keith Richards "a full pardon before God for all the things he’s done" was interesting; since when is that his job?), I'm going to stick to his asinine rant about same-sex marriage. In fact, I'm going to stick to only two lines of it.

You have to have a basic family structure.

Huckabee insists it's not that he's against same-sex marriage as much as it is that he's for "traditional marriage," because civilization would collapse (seriously—we'll get to that in a minute) without its basic family structure.

Which leaves me with just one question: Is this guy really unaware of the fact that there's no such thing as a "basic family structure" in America?!

There are two-parent homes with parents of the opposite sex; there are two-parent homes with parents of the same sex. There are single mom homes and single dad homes. Some kids are raised by one or both grandparents. Some kids are raised by a parent and grandparent, or a parent and aunt/uncle, or some combination thereof. Some kids are raised by much-older siblings. Some kids are raised in communities in which all the parents parent all the kids. Some families don't include kids at all. I have known families in all of these combinations—and there is absolutely nothing to suggest that one manifestation of family is inherently superior to the others.

People like Huckabee like to say more "reasonable-sounding" things in response to that, like, "We recognize that there are variations on the traditional family, but we think the traditional family is the best model." And you know what? That's bunk, too. Because it's just not the best model for everyone. Let's take the example of a straight, married couple I met in which the wife had a severe physical disability. His insurance covered her healthcare needs, so he could not be a stay-at-home parent; she could, but needed help, so his recently-widowed mother moved in with them to help with childcare. They affectionately called themselves a "three-parent home," and it worked brilliantly for them.

Naturally, Huckabee et. al. wouldn't object to this set-up, even though it resembles no more and no less their "traditional family" than a two-parent household with parents of the same sex. Some deviations (ahem) are more bothersome than others, I guess. They can dress it up in whatever load of "reasonable-sounding" malarkey they want, but underneath it's still the same naked bigotry.

There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived.

What total rubbish. I'd really love Mr. History to point to one example—just one—of a civilization that did rewrite "what marriage and family means" but didn't survive, specifically because of that decision.

…crickets…

Yeah, that's what I thought.

When you unpack Huckabee's defense of his position against same-sex marriage from its "reasonable-sounding" mooring, it's nothing but wholesale preposterous claptrap. And I'm totally bloody exhausted of seeing this abject stupidity repeatedly intoned in defense of a nonexistent tradition, as if it's profound.

Profoundly daft, maybe.