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Thursday, Jan 17, 2008 6:51 PM UTC

Huckabee digs a little deeper

A slippery slope between homosexuality and bestiality, but the Bible never changes.

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Topics: 2008 Elections, War Room, Mike Huckabee,

The beginning of the end for Sen. Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who lost his reelection bid in 2006, may have come in April 2003, when he famously suggested that there’s a slippery slope between homosexuality and bestiality.

So what do we have here?

In an interview with Beliefnet, Mike Huckabee tries again to dig himself out of his “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards” hole by … suggesting there’s a slippery slope between homosexuality and bestiality.

Asked whether it wouldn’t be a “dangerous undertaking” to try to bring the Constitution into conformity with the Bible — particularly “given the variety of biblical interpretations” — Huckabee said: “Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.”

Huckabee said that “the genius” of the Constitution is that it was built to be changed. On the other hand, he said, the Bible “was not created to be amended and altered with each passing culture.”

“The Bible was not written to be amended. The Constitution was,” Huckabee said. “Without amendments to the Constitution, women couldn’t vote, African-Americans wouldn’t be considered people. We have had to historically go back and to clarify, because there’ve been injustices made because the Constitution wasn’t as clear as it needed to be, and that’s the point.”

What Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister, doesn’t say: As historian Mark Newman writes, many Southern Baptists once “defended segregation in the sincere belief that it formed part of God’s plan for the human race,” and sometimes “cited biblical verses” in support of racial separation.

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog. More Tim Grieve.

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