Mike Huckabee gets ripped for using the Bible to defend Kim Davis
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has stepped up to the plate as one of the biggest defenders of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed last week for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on the grounds of her Christian beliefs. Huckabee recently went as far as to say he'd go to jail in Davis' place, and praised her faith and conviction. But when Huckabee attempted to do a victory lap on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday, the hosts suggested he was picking and choosing his Bible passages.
"You and I both know, and I say this as a divorced man, that Jesus focused a lot more on lust, focused a lot more on divorce, on the poor, focused a lot more on clothing the naked, visiting people in jail, taking care of the hopeless than he did on homosexuality," host Joe Scarborough said. "You could read the text of the Gospel, and what Jesus Christ said, and there's a lot more condemnation for people like myself than there is for people who participate in the gay lifestyle."
"Homosexual marriage was not an issue in the first century. There was no push for same-sex marriage when Jesus was teaching," Huckabee responded. "When people say Jesus never talked about same-sex marriage, he did, by virtue of talking about what marriage is."
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"But again, Jesus was much more explicit about divorce, and you could much more easily make an argument that a judge would refuse to grant divorces because Jesus was far more explicit about divorce equaling adultery," Scarborough said.
Kim Davis herself has been divorced three times, a point of hypocrisy that has been hotly debated (including here at The Week). Watch the trio duke it out on Morning Joe, below. Jeva Lange
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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