Former GOP presidential candidate and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee told Newsmax on Tuesday that he doesn’t believe traditional Catholics will embrace the Catholic Church’s attempts of “radical inclusion” of the LGBTQ+ community.
While speaking with guest host Todd Starnes on “The Chris Salcedo Show,” Huckabee weighed in on the Vatican’s release Tuesday of a document drafted after a two-year consultation process, the basis of which will become the focus of Pope Francis’ synod, a large gathering of bishops and laypeople, this October. Discussion topics will include the church taking new steps in promoting women to decision-making positions, new accountability measures to evaluate bishops’ exercise of authority, and “radical inclusion” of the LGBTQ community and others who claim to feel marginalized by the church.
The document specifically stated “LGBT+ persons” as opposed to the Vatican’s usual language of “persons with homosexual tendencies.”
“I think that a lot of traditional Catholics have embraced biblical theology when it comes to things like the sanctity of life and human sexuality. And it’s really hard to somehow reconcile that the Catholic Church continues to say that the priest and nun should be celibate,” Huckabee said. “But if you’re [LGBTQ], I guess it’s okay to practice a level of sexuality that is outside the biblical norms. I just think a lot of people are going to have a hard time [accepting that].”
“Look, I understand inclusion and acceptance of people,” he added. “That’s something we all believe in is as Christ’s followers. But it doesn’t mean that you accept lifestyles and that you accept versions and models of sexuality that are clearly against what the Scripture teaches in terms of what ‘male’ and ‘female’ is supposed to mean.”
Starnes then brought up news of Belmont University’s decision this week to cancel a scheduled event with Promise Keepers, a national Christian men’s ministry, after the organization issued a statement that spoke of “the dangers of gender ideology” and reaffirmed its support for biblical marriage between a man and a woman.
The former governor was not surprised by Belmont University’s decision.
“It’s [a] very sad day for Belmont and the people who have given money over the decades to make it a very, very successful and a prestigious school” Huckabee said. “It’s hard to say you’re a Christ-centered school when you deny that Jesus Himself … said, ‘Male and female He created He them,’ speaking of what God had created. If you’re going to deny what Jesus said about gender, then I think it’s kind of hard to say, ‘We’re following Jesus, but only if He doesn’t conflict with a very far, radical view of current culture.’
“I just like to think at some point, we’re going to decide that either we go with the Scriptures or we go with modern culture, which is ever-changing,” he added. “And for many of us who are believers, it’s pretty simple: You stick with the Scriptures.
“You tune your instrument to that which is solid, stable, and unchanging. You don’t tune it to an ever-changing ‘what I feel,’ ‘what I think,’ or ‘what I believe.'”