Mike Huckabee is still at it.

The former Arkansas governor and failed presidential candidate is still spouting discrimination against gay marriage and general LGBT equality, likely to drum up some hard-right support for his probable 2016 presidential bid. Perhaps he’s forgetting that it’s no longer 2004 and the anti-gay animus that worked so well for Bush’s campaign isn’t going to fly so well a decade later. Like all good devout public figures, though, he hides behind the Bible to excuse his bigotry.

Appearing on The Jim Bakker Show, a Christian Television talk show, Huckabee states explicitly that he just follows, “a standard that was not ours, it was God’s, and that for us to change it we would have to get permission.” So, apparently, he’d be all about supporting the gays if that pesky ol’ God would just let him.

Host Jim Bakker is quick to stroke Huckabee’s ego, pointing out that he employs gay people and even invites them into his home, so he’s not a “hater”; he treats them with “Southern respect.” An apt description – “southern nice” often carries with it the implication of passive-aggression or backhandedness; see “bless your heart” – as Huckabee follows Bakker’s assessment with assertions that conservatives need to get involved with the limiting and undermining of LGBT rights and equality.

Mike Huckabee: he’d love us if God would let him, but until then it’s his sacred duty to make us as second-class as possible. You can watch him speak for himself AFTER THE JUMP…