So the headline belowis a bit misleading, as Huckabee didn't actually say that. Precisely. He didn't, at least in the quoted passage, attribute to King any opinion whatsoever about gay marriage.
Instead, he quoted from King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" about civil disobedience, in the context of attacking those gosh-darn unelected federal judges telling the states they have to perform marriages for those gosh-darn gays, and the moral justification of refusing to do so. His money quote from King:
"One may well ask, ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all. We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal."
Which are, indeed, some fine words.
Of course, King draws the distinction between "just" and "unjust" laws. He knows that the same tool — civil disobedience and breaking of unjust laws — could cut both ways depending on where it was aimed and why. Civil disobedience and lawbreaking was used by segregationists and racist, too, of course.
King would also — demonstrably — recognize that engaging in such behavior also has legal repercussions, that breaking such laws can hold a civil and criminal penalty. Huckabee wants folk to get a pass in doing so.
So, no, Huckabee didn't actually assert King would agree that gay marriage is like the Holocaust. But it's clear that King would agree that civil disobedience to gay marriage laws and court rulings is like the folk who helped Jews under the Nazi regime, either.
But it makes for some great grandstanding headlines while running for the GOP nomination.
(By the way, Mike: what does "No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" mean to you, do you recognize where it's from, and does it offer you any insight as to how it is that, yes, federal judges and SCOTUS can intervene in matters of state law, such as marriage? Or is all of this just to rile up your voting base?)
Mike Huckabee: Martin Luther King Jr. would agree that gay marriage is like the Holocaust
In terms of civil disobedience, I always go back to the example in Daniel 6. The government passed a law that Daniel thought was immoral (or, in the terminology above, "unjust"). Daniel deliberately disobeyed the law. The government therefore declared that Daniel was subject to punishment (in this case, being thrown into the lions' den). Daniel willingly accepted the government's decision.
Of course, there can be nuanced replies to a government decision, such as Paul's appeal to Caesar. In fairness to Paul, when he did appeal to Caesar, the Roman authorities had great difficulty stating the specific charge that Paul was appealing.
+John E. Bredehoft Civil disobedience has three goals: integrity (aligning behavior with belief), setting an example for others, and, most importantly, to shame the public or powers that be into seing the injustice involved.
For some belief systems, there are also spiritual blessings from being punished or martyred.
That takes some hutzpah, since King ally and totally gay Bayard Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington.
I find it … remarkable that a large portion of the conservative Right, having excoriated King for his perceived radicalism and personal faults for the last fifty years, have decided to try and rehabilitate him as a Christian minister, and thus as obviously holding all their own conservative religious opinions.
I don't know what King's thoughts were on homosexuality. I'd like to think that he was congruent in his beliefs in both causes, but even if he was not, I don't take it as an offense to the cause, or to him (any more than Jefferson's conflicted attitudes toward slaves take away from the greatness of what he accomplished or otherwise believed in).
Please God, let there be a third party. 🙁