On Fox News Sunday, former Arkansas governor and potential 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee equated Phil Robertson’s views on homosexuality and race with “traditional values,” claiming that they amount to “the same position that Barack Obama” holds.

“I think it has come to a point in our culture where political correctness has made it so if you want to take a point of view, it is traditional, it holds to steadfast old fashioned biblical, Christian values — which are also, by the way, the traditional values of Judaism and Islam — somehow you’re supposed to just shut up and keep that to yourself,” Huckabee told host Chris Wallace.

ADVERTISEMENT

“But if you want to advocate for same-sex marriage, we’re supposed to be very tolerant. And I’m tolerant of the people who have a position on that issue contrary to mine,” he continued.

“But I’m not tolerant of the intolerance.”

“What we’ve seen is, there’s a new level of bullying on the part of these militant activist groups, who if anyone says something that holds to the same position that Barack Obama held in 2008, when he was at the Saddleback Church with John McCain, made it clear very clear that he opposed same sex marriage, and he said he did so because he was a Christian and because of his biblical views.”

“If [Obama’s] position was OK in 2008,” Huckabee asked, “how come it isn’t OK in 2013, or 2014?”

Wallace answered him by noting that it’s not the substance of what Robertson said that many people found offensive, but the manner in which he said it.

ADVERTISEMENT

Huckabee acknowledged that Robertson’s words were “more appropriate for the duck woods than the pages of a major news magazine,” and that Robertson’s comment that “no [black people] were singing the blues” before the Civil Rights Movement was inaccurate.

But he insisted that the “real issue” was that GLAAD and Human Rights Watch called out A&E over the comments about same-sex marriage.

Watch the entire segment with Mike Huckabee below.