This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” April 30, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Our very own Governor Mike Huckabee visited Rosie O’Donnell on her radio show recently, And things got pretty contentious when they touched on the subject of gay adoption.
And here is a bit of their conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROSIE O’DONNELL, TALK RADIO HOST: Didn’t you try to have a law that said that gays could not adopt?
MIKE HUCKABEE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No, there was a constitutional amendment that was placed on the ballot and it was voted on by the people. It was not something I initiated. I did support it primarily because I felt like it was one more way in which we were moving away from the traditional definition of marriage.
O’DONNELL: I just think it’s interesting for a guy that seems to have overcome a lot in your life. You know you have a lot of — were you raised by — you know in a poor family, right, you grew up sort of poor.
HUCKABEE: Right.
O’DONNELL: And you became a pastor and the teachings of Christ is what you follow in your life. And I don’t know, is that a very pious view to be — I mean, is that a pious view to you, Mike, to be —
HUCKABEE: No, I don’t think it’s about piety. I think it’s about — if one is in fact a believer, and accepts that the biblical norms are the norms that we should live by, it’s not a matter of being judgmental.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: And joining me now with reaction to that is the man himself, Governor Mike Huckabee.
Governor, good to see you. Thanks for being here.
HUCKABEE: Well, it’s great to be with you, Sean.
HANNITY: Rosie O’Donnell? Are you out of — you know.
HUCKABEE: Like you asked before. Am I out of my mind?
HANNITY: I did say that.
HUCKABEE: Actually it was a very respectful conversation. To her credit she was very civil. She didn’t try to yell, scream, argue with me. I think it was an honest conversation that the two of us had.
No, we’re not going to come to terms. I think that one of the things that came out of it for me was there is this understanding that if you are a Christian then you’re supposed to believe that Jesus just says hey, whatever you want to do is OK.
People forget Jesus was very divisive. Jesus caused people to have to make real tough decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t think he did it with a sense that he was hoping to make people mad but he did make people mad.
HANNITY: But then — this came up in the course of the conversation as I understand it. Because she’s adopted a number of children. I don’t know how many.
HUCKABEE: I think two children.
HANNITY: OK. So she —
HUCKABEE: And I have no doubt that she loves those children and that she has the best intentions for them. It’s not a personal thing. This is not a big issue for me. I don’t go around making this an issue. It’s not something that is high on my priority list to talk about.
HANNITY: Are you against gay adoption?
HUCKABEE: Personally I don’t think it’s the ideal. I think the ideal is —
HANNITY: What do you —
HUCKABEE: Kids need a role model, both a mother and a father. You know, as I told her, rather than try new ways to create a family we ought to work on the one that God gave us, and that is having a mother and a father, creating a generation and then training them to be our replacements.
And I know people will say, well, we don’t have the ideal. But still, kids need both the mother and father role models in their life.
HANNITY: Look, I’ve made similar arguments myself. I think there are certain things that fathers offer their children that mothers naturally don’t. And the things that mother offer children. I think there’s a difference.
But without going down that road, let me ask you this. There’s a story behind the story and how you got invited on the program in the first place. How is that?
HUCKABEE: Well, I was at the College of New Jersey. It’s a wonderful school over — not far from Trenton and Ewing, New Jersey. And there was an interview with a group of what I was told was — were college journalists. Well, it turned out that one of them was actually more of an activist than a journalist and so he would ask me a question and I would answer it.
He obviously didn’t like the answer so he would then start a debate. And I would try to explain to him and give him a little bit more of an understanding of logically why I held the positions I did.
HANNITY: Right.
HUCKABEE: So he took that, wrote a story. It got picked up by a lot of the blogs that support same-sex marriage. Then the mainstream media picked up on it. They blew it up all over the place. Rosie got it from that and that’s how it happened. Turned out this kid had been arrested at an Ann Coulter speech.
HANNITY: I think we actually have that video.
HUCKABEE: Oh you do? OK.
HANNITY: Let’s roll the video here. Here it is. I don’t know if we have any sound on that — this is him being arrested. And he claimed there was police brutality at the time of this arrest. And the video actually showed that there was no such abuse. And he had dropped the suit, as I understand it.
HUCKABEE: Yes. He was screaming. I can’t tell if you have the audio up. But if you do, you can hear him screaming and yelling and really making a scene. He should have gotten an Oscar for his performance.
But this shows that he had a pattern of creating a disturbance and then getting attention and publicity for it. It to me was not so much about same-sex marriage or gay adoption.
As I tell people, my position on same-sex marriage is the same that Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the voters in 30 states where it’s been on the ballot —
HANNITY: Is there a lack of tolerance for those that express their Christian faith in that — in their belief about, for example, either the definition of marriage or controversial issue like gay adoption?
Is there — in other words, is it predicated on this idea well, if you believe that and you’re practicing your faith, you must somehow be bigoted?
HUCKABEE: Well, it’s always interesting to me that I’m considered intolerant if I don’t accept a new definition of marriage. But if someone doesn’t accept the traditional marriage — the only one we’ve had in 5,000 years of recorded human history — somehow that’s a symbol of tolerance.
I just think the burden of proof is on those who want to change the institution. But again, the real issue is, we’re living in a day where the mainstream media can take a story and can manipulate it, can distort it.
This young man released an edited version —
HANNITY: Yes.
HUCKABEE: Of the interview. Wasn’t really depicting what it was.
HANNITY: This has happened to me as well.
Alright, I’ve got to ask you. We just had this in the last segment here —
HUCKABEE: Yes.
HANNITY: — about this horrible oil spill. A number of people lost their lives in the explosion. But more importantly, this happened last Tuesday.
HUCKABEE: Yes.
HANNITY: And it’s only in the last two days that the administration has gotten involved. Now why do I believe that if George W. Bush were president, that this would be the biggest deal, slow to respond, slow to react? And almost everybody is defending the president here for doing nothing.
HUCKABEE: Well because they’re too —
HANNITY: Wasn’t it his responsibility?
HUCKABEE: Well, if Katrina was George Bush’s responsibility, this is Barack Obama’s responsibility. You can’t have two sets of rules. One applied to a Democratic president, one applied to a Republican president.
And I think we’re clearly saying that we do. Can Barack Obama personally go out there with a bucket and start picking up the oil? No.
HANNITY: Yes.
HUCKABEE: But the point is — you made it I think very well. There has been a significant sort of gap between the time of the accident and the time in which now we’re beginning to see federal response.
HANNITY: Some are saying this is Barack Obama’s Katrina? You think this becomes politically his Katrina or potentially?
HUCKABEE: Only if the news media creates it to be.
HANNITY: It’s not —
HUCKABEE: It goes back to even my experience. The media can frame the issues and they can frame the context in which they are presented. So if they don’t say, where was President Obama, no, it won’t be his Katrina.
HANNITY: Alright, Governor, good to see you.
HUCKABEE: Great to see you.
HANNITY: We’ll be watching you in “Huckabee” this weekend.
HUCKABEE: Thank you.
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