December 30 2007
On NBC’s Meet The Press this morning, host Tim Russert asked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee if he believed “people are born gay or choose to be gay?” “I don’t know whether people are born that way,” responded Huckabee, “but one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice.”

Huckabee conceded that “people who are gay say that they’re born that way,” but added that he believed that “how we behave and how we carry out that behavior” is more important. Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdQx8_hBt3Q

As ThinkProgress has noted before, Huckabee has a record of using the power of government to discriminate against the choices that gay Americans make in their private lives. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee pushed to strengthen the state’s anti-sodomy laws in order to “protect the traditional family structure”:

In 1997, Huckabee requested an amendment to a state Senate bill stating “that it is Arkansas public policy to prohibit sodomy to protect the traditional family structure.” [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 1/23/1997]