Media Matters and PajamaPundit are running a video clip of an interview with Mike Huckabee by Judge Napolitano with the following portion of the transcript highlighted:
Napolitano says, “Why should the state be involved [deciding who may, and may not get married]?”, to which Huckabee responds:
Well I think that it is an acknowledgement of the higher law that even the state operates under Judge. Which I believe is an important part of a civil society that states not only have civil law, but they acknowledge that they themselves are subject to the higher law of the natural, law of God.
Many in the Democratic Party, and some in the Republican Party love to label their opponents. Mike Huckabee has been accused of being a theocrat on more than one occasion, and this clip is already being used to do it again. Much of the pundit-world became apoplectic when Huckabee during the 2008 presidential campaign season dared suggest four facts, none of which would have been denied by Christians or most conservative pundits when taken separately, but are apparently a sign that Huckabee is a Jihadist when put together as he did (see below):
[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
The four facts:
1. The Constitution Can Be Amended (Gasp!)
2. The Bible Cannot Be Amended (Another Gasp!)
3. The Bible affirms the pro-life, anti-abortion position, and the truth that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.
4. The best way to defend these issues is to amend the Constitution*.
I believe Governor Huckabee at some time admitted the wording of his statement could have been better, but only a few have come to his defense. But the recent flap over his comments to Judge Napolitano show that no amount of clarifying will help people bent on twisting your words and meaning. Here were Martin Luther King, Jr’s words about Natural Law in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law….And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, unBiblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular….Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”‘, but the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.
Would any of these critics on the right or left suggest that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a theocrat?
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*One could perhaps disagree on whether that is best strategic approach to these issues but it would not change the argument that Huckabee was making about the legitimacy of changing the Constitution.
