On "Morning Joe" Wednesday, non-titular co-host Mika Brzezinski engaged Republican presidential candidate and Kim Davis-supporter extraordinaire Mike Huckabee in a conversation he clearly didn't want to have about the biblical justification for discriminating against same-sex marriage while allowing divorcees to remarry at will.
"What if Kim Davis wanted to get a third or fourth marriage license from somebody who truly believes that you should only get married once?" Brzezinki asked. "What would you say to that?"
"Kim Davis," he replied, "she's actually been married four times."
"That's my point," Brzezinski said.
"Maybe you don't know that she's been married four times," Huckabee continued, showcasing his listening skills for potential voters. "She's a person who says, 'I lived a very different life, a life of sin.' Four years ago, Kim Davis came to Christ, found forgiveness and the reason that she is so steadfast and unwavering in her faith is because she knows what God's grace means. She's experienced it. And as a result, she says I can't ever go back and live that life again and the God who forgave me compels me to follow my faith."
An unimpressed Brzezinski replied, "that's not an answer to my question."
Joe Scarborough jumped in at this point, noting that "Jesus focused a lot more on divorce, focused a lot more on lust, focused a lot more 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. In fact, he never mentioned homosexuality."
"You can read the text of the gospel and what Jesus Christ said," he continued, "and there's a lot more condemnation for people like myself who have been divorced than there is condemnation for people that participate in the gay lifestyle."
Huckabee replied, "homosexual marriage was not an issue in the First Century," to which Scarborough countered that that's not the point. " Jesus was much more explicit about divorce and you can much more easily make an argument that a judge would refuse to grant divorces because Jesus was far more explicit about divorce equaling adultery."
But Brzezinski didn't need her co-host to explain her question for her. "I asked you a question," she said. "Would you support a clerk who would not give Kim Davis a third or a fourth marriage license?"
"I'm not sure if I follow that question," Huckabee replied.
"If the court says, 'I'm sorry, I don't think you should get married more than once or twice' and you're asking for your third or fourth license," she tried to reply, but the former Arkansas governor cut her off, claiming that she was "asking a question of a different nature."
"No, I'm not," she replied.
"That's a different nature," he said.
"No, it's not," she replied.
"Yes, it is," he said. "There's a difference between a marriage between a man and woman and a marriage between two men or a marriage between two women."
Brzezinski, clearly tired of hearing his attempts to dodge her question, listened as he explained that "what we're talking about is whether or not we can redefine marriage, not whether or not that a person can have more than one because the law clearly says what people can do. They can have a divorce. We laws for that. We have laws for marriage and remarriage."
She pointed out that "the law says you can get married now as a gay person," to which he replied by asking, "What law is that? Can you quote me the statute? Can you quote me the specific statute or can you tell me and let me know which article of the Constitution that says that same-sex marriage is under the jurisdiction of the federal government?"
Huckabee never answered her question, but later explained his "logic" here, saying that "the point is if that hadn't been legislated, if it never had been codified into law -- we're a people of law, not of politics. When the courts become political and when the courts begin to be the super legislative body, which is what has happened here, that's a dangerous path on which we're going to lose this great republic."
Which explanation also, of course, doesn't answer Brzezinski's question.
Watch the entire exchange below via MSNBC.
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