I’m starting to think that Rachel Maddow has an issue or professional discomfort with taking on publicly anti-gay figures on her show. It’s an oddity, given 1) she’s out and has a high-profile; and 2) her fellow MSNBC host, Keith Olbermann, has been extremely forceful as an ally on the issue by comparison. She’s spoken at length about the debacle of Prop 8, so one would assume that if given the opportunity, Maddow would address the issue with well-known homophobes.
The reticence to take on agents of intolerance surfaced in a recent interview with former GOP clown car occupant, rapist/murderer-releasing Baptist minister-without-a-theology-degree Mike Huckabee. (Think Progress):
Maddow was notably silent on the issue of gay rights when interviewing former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. On Tuesday, Huckabee had insisted that gay rights and civil rights were totally different because gay rights activists’ “skulls” weren’t getting “cracked.” On Wednesday morning, Huckabee claimed that Prop. 8 “did not prohibit” gay marriage; it “simply affirmed that which already has and forever has existed,” he said.
During the seven-minute interview last night, however, Maddow never forced Huckabee to defend these claims. Instead, Maddow repeatedly asked him about his future presidential plans and speculated about the influence of the Christian Right in the GOP.
Huckabee has a long history of making statements that indicate an ignorant worldview when it comes to LGBTs—as Think Progress noted, Huckabee has equated homosexuality with bestiality and necrophilia, said being gay is a choice, wants sodomy recriminalized, and would like to see gay couples banned from adopting, and prevent same-sex partners from receiving spousal survival benefits.
Now here comes the interesting part to discuss here in the coffeehouse. Maddow was contacted by ThinkProgress to ask why she avoided LGBT issues with Huck. Her response? See it after the jump.