Just days after a 22 year-old Syracuse woman was murdered because she was gay, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee asserted on The View today that gay civil rights should not be taken seriously because “[b]lacks were stoned, hung, and dragged for their constitutional right to ’sit at the table.’ Whites – gay or not – already had a seat at that table.”

Where to begin? A police report out today says 22 year-old Moses “Teish” Cannon was shot outside a party in Syracuse, NY last Friday because she was a lesbian.



Last week in Memphis, Duanna Johnson, a transexual was murdered execution-style. 15 year-old Lawrence King was murdered earlier this year for being gay. 16.6% of all hate crimes are directed at LGBT Americans. 4 out of 10 gay men are the victims of homophobia-related violence, as is 1 in 8 lesbians and bisexuals.

If Huckabee thinks it’s not a civil rights movement until somebody’s “skull’s cracked”, if violence directed on a people is the most important metric to him, then he owed the gay community an immediate apology– not just for being willfully ignorant of the ongoing violence against LGBT Americans, but inviting further violence by recklessly implying that it’s only when people get physically attacked that their views should be taken seriously.