Mike Huckabee's Friends Who Think Lesbianism Is a Plague on Society

As the perennial politician, it's not surprising that Mike Huckabee spent his Labor Day weekend wooing potential voters at an outdoor festival. Only this festival isn't your typical cookout or barbecue. This was a tent revival to condemn homosexuality.

Sponsored by California mega-pastor, and defender of Uganda's "Kill the Gays" bill, Rev. Lou Engle, Huckabee appeared via video supporting a Labor Day gathering known as "The Call." The goal was to bring scores of social conservatives to Sacramento, California to rally against same-sex marriage and gay rights. And while numbers weren't entirely astronomical for the event (only several thousand, as opposed to the hoped for tens of thousands), the rhetoric on display was shrill enough to crack concrete.

For Huckabee, it's an interesting endorsement of a group of religious leaders that are far more extreme in their anti-gay views than many evangelicals and social conservatives tend to be. As Huckabee sets the stage for what could be a likely 2012 Presidential run, does he think that embracing rather extreme anti-gay rhetoric will help him win votes?

Among Huckabee's friends at "The Call" rally included preacher Cindy Jacobs. She got up on the stage during the event, and gave a lengthy sermon about the plague of lesbianism taking over the country.

"We know that it’s not just the men who have a problem with pornography and I want to say it like this: girl-on-girl kissing, lesbianism is a plague on our society today," Jacobs said. "I’m going to call on the women and I want to say that it’s time for us to repent. This girl-on-girl kissing, Madonna kissing Britney Spears, and what happened to Britney after that and a lot of other things. I know we’re going out over worldwide television. I want to tell you, bisexuality, every kind of perverse thing, the Bible calls this sin. And I want the women of God to kneel down right now and we are going to put a stop to this in our generation and we are going to say 'No More!'”

No word on whether this will be part of Huckabee's 2012 stump speech.

Of course, beyond just Jacobs' words, it's worth noting that the host of the event, Rev. Lou Engle, is fairly radical in his own right. After California's Supreme Court briefly legalized same-sex marriage in 2008, Rev. Engle suggested that Christians should fight to the death in order to avoid giving LGBT Americans equal rights. In the time since, Rev. Engle has traveled to Uganda, where he joined legislators behind a deathly anti-gay bill to call homosexuality evil and abhorrent.

Also speaking at the Labor Day weekend event was Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council. His organization has gone on national television to suggest that gay people ought to be arrested, and that homosexuality should be a crime.

Some folks might be inclined to laugh off Huckabee's endorsement of this rally, and suggest that his embracing of such controversial religious leaders puts him out of contention for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination. But then you go and look at polls surveying where voters are at on the GOP side for 2012, and you see that Mike Huckabee is leading Iowa, which will hold the first in the nation Presidential caucus in 16 months. You also see Huckabee endorsing candidates like Georgia gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal, who won his primary, as well as Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller, who shocked the country by defeating incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the state's GOP primary.

Huckabee is clearly a politician who wields some influence on the right-side of the political aisle.

Which makes his support for religious leaders who compare homosexuality to a plague, as well as religious leaders who endorse efforts in Uganda to kill gay people, all the more scary, not to mention dangerous.

Photo credit: yaquina