Presidential candidate’s anti-gay bigotry sounds like something out of a 1970s TV sitcom
If television executives ever decide to remake the wildly-successful 1970s-era All in the Family sitcom to address this century’s issues, I sure hope they will borrow some material from today’s 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls — especially former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
When I watched Huckabee’s recent interview on CNN about LGBT people and same-sex marriage, I felt like my TV and I had slipped back in time. His remarks comparing LGBT people living their lives to straight people cussing and drinking alcohol sounded just like something Archie Bunker might have said.
“People can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle,” Huckabee reasoned to CNN’s Dana Bash as he sidestepped a question about whether he believed people came by their sexual orientation through heredity or choice. “I don’t shut people out of my life because they have a different point of view.”
Gee thanks, Mike, I thought. That’s a relief. I’d hate to think I couldn’t hang out with a fun guy like you.
Usually, I would switch channels at that point, but I sensed more incredible observations yet to come from the Baptist-pastor-turned-politician. Sure enough, he went on in his ill-fated attempts to further enlighten the CNN host and her audience with his broad-mindedness.
“I don’t drink alcohol, but gosh, a lot of my friends — maybe most of them — do,” he said. “You know, I don’t use profanity, but believe me, I’ve got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera — it’s not my cup of tea.”
I suppose the reference to the high arts sort of tempered the comparison to foul-mouthed boozing, but it failed to make any more sense to me.
Again, it reminded me of Archie, the outspoken, conservative, backward Protestant bigot whose observations so stunned the other characters in the show they stared at in him silence. I envisioned his daughter, Gloria, and her husband, Michael, rolling their eyes, and his naïve wife, Edith, cocking her head in confusion as laughter echoed in the background.
The satirical scenes in All in the Family put issues like racial and religious bigotry, male chauvinism and anti-homosexual and -transgender bias in perspective for many Americans. Many people got it, and probably quite a few saw themselves in the depictions. I suspect the show led to a lot of re-evaluations of long-held beliefs.
The sitcom preceded the issue of same-sex marriage by three decades, but All in the Family did address interracial marriage. Through humor, the show illustrated the absurdity of skin color dictating whom people could marry. In one of the show’s episodes Archie and Edith discussed the “mixing” of races:
Archie: “This mixing the colors, before you know it, the world’s gonna be just one color.”
Edith: “Well, what’s wrong with that, Archie?”
Archie: “Can’t you use your head? How the hell are we gonna tell each other apart?”
The absurdity of Archie’s argument made an unspoken point: Why would anyone care about whom others marry?
It came as no surprise Huckabee held a hard line on same-sex marriage in the CNN interview, saying that the Bible forbids homosexuality. “This is not just a political issue,” he said. “It is a biblical issue. And as a biblical issue — unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it’s really not my place to say, OK, I’m just going to evolve.”
Most conservative Republicans would likely agree with Huckabee on this issue. But I could see the statement coming out of Archie’s mouth if rewritten to reflect how a blue-collar worker talks. Archie would think like Huckabee about the issue of same-sex marriage, the last big culture barrier of our time to overcome.
The good news is that times are changing, similarly to how it happened in the late 1960s and 1970s. In earlier days, white bigots used the Bible to justify discrimination against black people and others who didn’t look like them. Today, they’ve found new scapegoats, such as LGBT people and immigrants, to target.
More and more conservative straight people I know tell me they are tired of politicians who brandish the Bible at them and focus their attention on abortion and same-sex marriage. Instead, they’ve expressed concerns about issues such as the economy and the consequences of worldwide political unrest that also worry most LGBT people. None of the Republican candidates appear to be generating much interest among the conservative voters I know.
Ultra conservative politicians seem to be out of touch with the majority of Americans, and that is why the White House could be out of reach for Huckabee and others like him in 2016. Maybe the humor of a revamp of All in the Family might clue them into what does and does not really concern most Americans today, although for now I’d rather they stay in the dark — at least until after the 2016 election.
David Webb is a veteran journalist with more than three decades of experience, including a stint as a staff reporter for Dallas Voice. He now lives on Cedar Creek Lake and writes for publications nationwide.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 6, 2015.