Earlier this week we told you about the Mike Huckabee profile in the New Yorker, a profile in which he describes the “ick factor” of gay marriage.
“I do believe that God created male and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the two opposite sexes. … We can get into the ick factor, but the fact is two men in a relationship, two women in a relationship, biologically, that doesn’t work the same,” the former Arkansas governor and 2012 presidential contender said.
Huckabee is now taking issue with news outlets jumping on his use of “ick factor.” In a statement posted on his PAC’s web site, he defends himself, saying the phrase isn’t his.
“My use of the phrase ‘ick factor’ was as the established notion from within the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender (GLBT) community. It was not an indication of personal aversion, but rather a reference to an established phrase used mostly from same-sex marriage advocates and militants – not one I created,” he wrote.
“This phrase is not new. This phrase is not mine,” he added.
He cites work by Martha Nussbaum and Joseph Erbentraut as using the phrase.
“Many of these groups [who wrote about his use of “ick factor”] didn’t do any research on the term’s origin and usage just chose to attack without the facts,” Huckabee wrote.
Erbentraut wrote an article in Edge recently titled “The ‘Ick’ Factor: How Gay Sex Plays in the Equality Debate.” In it, he cites Nussbaum’s theory that much conservative opposition to gay rights is based on a feeling of disgust.
“All societies known to us have subordinated some group or groups of people by ascribing disgusting properties to them. This is a key feature of misogyny, of anti-Semitism, of historical Indian caste prejudice, of American racism and so forth,” Nussbaum says in the article.
(H/T ThinkProgress)
(Ed. note: This story originally, and incorrectly, said Nussbaum “coined the phrase.” The error was corrected after Nussbaum came forward and said she’s never used the phrase.)
