Mike Huckabee and the "Ick Factor"

This is few days old, but still interesting to me; Mike Huckabee, who was a candidate for the GOP nomination for the presidential race in 2008 and is still thought of as a likely contender for 2012, despite what he himself might have said about it, gave a pretty informative interview about his views lately on a number of subjects that might be relevant to his future political aspirations.

You know how those pieces are. They lay out a platform without really laying out a platform, and then smart cookies quote from it later on. So here's Huckabee about teh gheysecks:

But Huckabee doesn’t just want to leave things the way they are; he wants to change the Constitution to specifically prohibit gay people from getting married. He has called homosexuality “sinful and unnatural” and is fond of amusing audiences with the witticism “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

One afternoon in Jerusalem, while Huckabee was eating a chocolate croissant in the lounge of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, I asked him to explain his rationale for opposing gay rights. “I do believe that God created male and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the two opposite sexes,” he said. “Male and female are biologically compatible to have a relationship. We can get into the ick factor, but the fact is two men in a relationship, two women in a relationship, biologically, that doesn’t work the same.”

You know what else has the "ick factor" in that same article? For him, sex with Nancy Pelosi or Helen Thomas. So, some straight sex is out, too. And I think the idea that same-sex relations are especially "icky" is peculiar, when straight couples (or....some numerical equation in which straights are involved) can be, well, damned similar, when you think about it. What I'm boiling it down to is--all sex is private and potentially icky. Especially if you are doing it right. The "ick factor" is for people who still think in terms of "cooties." But grown-ups who've been around a bit? Most people get past the "ick factor". The same way picky kids learn to eat lima beans, or whatever. They get over themselves, and they can also mind their own business, too.

Like Huckabee should. And anyway, regarding the pic of Huckabee with fish--a handy analogy strikes me: fishing is fun for some folks, and eating fish is also fun for some. Not everyone likes fishing, and not everyone likes eating fish. And hardly anyone likes cleaning and gutting those darn fish--there's that "ick factor"--but you have to, or the fishing doesn't make any sense, and no one gets around to the eating. (Was that folksy enough?)

Now, I don't know if Mike or his missus cleaned that big old fish, but somebody sure had to, and if I have a good idea about these matters, nobody in the Huckabee household gave a good goddamn how icky the fish guts and scales and all were once they sat down to eat it. Because a little "ick" is sometimes a necessary thing.

I don't know why my analogy for gay sex involves eating fish, but I went there. Y'all come back now, y'hear?