Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee talks to GQ about a number of things in this recent interview, and says he doesn’t want gays to have marriage or civil unions.

GQ: Is the strategy shifting because social conservatives are losing on those core issues? Ten years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have gay marriage even in liberal Massachusetts. Now it’s there.

HUCKABEE: I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that’s important. You have to have a basic family structure. There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business. But when you want to redefine what family means or what marriage means, then that’s an issue that should require some serious and significant debate in the public square. And if you look at states that have had it on the ballot—I know in our state it was a 70-percent-against issue. Most states are similar to that.

GQ: But if the younger generation keeps going the way it’s going, it could be 50 percent in ten years.

HUCKABEE: It could.

GQ: I just wonder what you’d say to the gay couple who says, “Well, we want to live this way, and my partner can’t come visit me in a nursing home.”

HUCKABEE: He can with a power of attorney. That’s the fallacy, that this requires some new definition of marriage. It’s simply not the case.

GQ: So why can’t you call it a civil union?

HUCKABEE: Because it really is a precursor toward marriage. Once the government says this relationship is in essence similar to or equal to a marriage—we’re not going to call it that, but that’s what it is—and you grant it the same basic rights as marriage, then you’ve effectively done it.

He will, however, gladly take the support of gays if they’d like to give it to him.

Is This Guy for Real [gq]