Mike Huckabee, 2016 GOP Candidate, Calls Transgender Rights A Threat

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who declared his candicacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 almost one month ago, has called the move to grant transgender rights a threat to the country, The Guardian reports. Huckabee also joked about the issue, saying if he could have been transgendered in high school, he could have taken showers with the girls.

Speaking before the National Religious Broadcaster Convention in Nashville, Tennessee recently, Huckabee argued the move for transgender rights is a threat to the country. Huckabee spoke to the group in February, but the video has become public this past weekend.

“For those who do not think that we are under threat, simply recognize the fact that we are now, in city after city, watching ordinances say that your seven-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom, cannot be offended and you can’t be offended if she’s greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man,” Huckabee said in Nashville, while speaking at the NRC convention.

Huckabee attracted controversy for his joke about the issue, in which he suggested that claiming to be transgendered would have allowed him to take showers with the girls.

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE [physical education],” said Huckabee. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said: ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’ You’re laughing because it sounds so ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

Huckabee called it “inherently wrong” and referred to the campaign for transgender rights as a “social experiment” being forced on children. Huckabee used as example, the move to allow transgendered individuals to use bathrooms in public schools marked for students of the other sex.

Huckabee’s joke about being transgendered in order to take showers with the girls was reported by Politico, with the headline, “Mike Huckabee: I wish I pretended to be transgender to shower with girls.”

“And yet today, we’re the ones who are ridiculed and scorned because we point out the obvious: That there’s something inherently wrong with forcing little children to be a part of this social experiment,” Politico quoted Huckabee as saying, “I’m not against anybody; I’d just like for somebody to bring their brain to work someday and not leave it on the bed stand when they show up to govern.”

Mike Huckabee, who expects to have strong support from social conservatives for his candidacy in 2016, strongly believes that granting rights to transgender individuals, such as the rights to use bathrooms marked for the opposite sex, does post a threat to society. He believes it is part of a larger culture war that is taking place. As controversial as his views are to those who don’t agree, it can be expected that his views will be equally as strongly supported by those who agree with him.

[Photo of Mike Huckabee by Darren McCollester/Getty Images.]