Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee slammed the Obama administration for focusing on LGBT rights instead of military strategies to battle the Islamic State.
The former Arkansas governor took to Facebook to denounce Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s speech at the annual LGBT Pride Celebration on Tuesday. His diatribe referred to Obama’s admission at the Group of Seven summit in Germany on Monday that the Pentagon doesn’t have a complete strategy for combating the Islamic State.
“The fact that President Obama invests more in strategies to celebrate LGBT pride month for our military than military strategies to defeat radical Islam proves this administration has a massive, mind-numbing prioritization problem,” Huckabee wrote on his Facebook page.
Carter in his speech announced that the Department of Defense had completed its equal opportunity overhaul, ensuring that the department responds to discrimination based on sexual orientation the same way it treats discrimination stemming from race, religion, age and origin.
“With chaos in Iraq, conflict raging across the Middle East, Russia on the march, and Iran on the verge of the bomb, our military is dealing with more uncertainty and instability than at any point since WWII,” Huckabee added. “Enough is enough. The United States military social experiment.”
The presidential candidate is well known for opposing LGBT equality. He was in favor of keeping gays and lesbians out of the military and wanted to reinstate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Huckabee also has protested same-sex marriage, laws that protect LGBT citizens from discrimination and LGBT couples adopting children.
“As president, I will honor our troops and respect their sacrifice. We must never, ever exploit their service,” Huckabee ended.
