Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee leaves Trump Tower on November 18, 2016 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty)

Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee has declared that LGBT+ people are the “greatest threat” to the US.

The former Republican presidential hopeful, a long-time opponent of LGBT+ rights, spoke out in an interview with the Christian Post.

Mike Huckabee warns of LGBT+ ‘threat’ to US

Huckabee, the father of President Donald Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claimed that gender and sexual identity pose the “greatest threat” to the moral fibre of the US.

He continued: “The biggest threat to biblical principles today is the failure to apply a biblical standard of maleness and femaleness.”

Huckabee blamed the introduction of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s for starting the US down the slippery slope, adding: “That’s when we first started losing that sense of sacredness of what marriage meant.

“So I’m not really that surprised that same sex-marriage has become in vogue because the Christian Church were the ones who essentially abdicated a strict responsibility about what biblical marriage should look like.”

He added: “Once you’ve destroyed that, why can’t you have any and everything?”

Mike Huckabee: People should ‘choose lifestyles’ that work

Huckabee said: “The gender dysphoria we’re seeing today is largely due to the fact that the Church has failed to present very clearly the words of Jesus and Genesis 5:2: ‘Male and female He created them.’”

He added: “People are afraid that if they are really biblical, it will alienate people and I think that’s nonsense.

“Yes, it will alienate some people who are more interested in preserving the lifestyle they have chosen than a lifestyle that will be practical and will work. But it will also be a lifesaver for the people who are really looking for genuine truth.”

“We need to be bold and say, ‘It doesn’t matter what you feel. It doesn’t matter what you think, or what you believe; what matters is truth.'”

Huckabee previously labelled gay parenting ‘destructive’, claiming in 2015: “Conferring a moral and legal equivalency to any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman, by legislative or judicial fiat, sends the message that children do not need a mother and a father.

“As a policy matter, such unions convey the message that mums and dads are completely irrelevant to the well-being of children.

“Such a policy statement is unconscionable and destructive.”

The right-wing stalwart has also compared anti-LGBT activists to Martin Luther King.

After same-sex marriage became legal, he said: “I think in all of our lives there comes moments where we have to decide…. do we obey God or do we obey a decision that we believe is unlawful?

“Martin Luther King perhaps taught us best in our own lifetime… there were laws he disobeyed because he believed they were unjust laws.”

Huckabee continued: “He was willing to suffer for his decisions, And I think that’s what we have to accept.”