June 26, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Mike Huckabee hit back Monday against liberals drawing parallels between his daughter getting expelled from a Virginia restaurant and Christians refusing to provide services for same-sex “weddings.”
“I wish I didn’t have to comment on the inexcusably rude treatment of a Virginia restaurant owner in asking my daughter Sarah and her family to leave, simply because she disagrees with their politics,” the former Republican governor of Arkansas wrote Monday on his personal website. “But it became a major news story and seems to be part of a growing trend on the left.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were asked to leave by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, on Friday night, because of Sanders’ association with President Donald Trump.
“I would have done the same thing again,” unrepentant owner Stephanie Wilkinson said later, claiming that kicking out a paying customer was necessary in a “moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
Gov. Huckabee told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Monday that Wilkinson then “followed them across the street, called people and organized a protest yelling and screaming at them from outside the other restaurant and creating this scene.” Wilkinson has yet to confirm or deny the accusation.
While some on the Left such as Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, have responded to the story by openly endorsing the practice of harassing members of the Trump administration as they go about their personal lives, others have attempted to suggest that conservatives who object to the way Sanders was treated are guilty of hypocrisy.
“Some who defend baker’s right to refuse service to gay couples whine (regarding people) refusing service to a person who’s the face of a deceitful Administration,” CNN contributor Ana Navarro said Sunday. “What’s good for the goose is good for the Red Hen. Difference is, being gay is not a choice. Being an accomplice to Trump is.”
The elder Huckabee took aim at such “idiotic claims” in his article on Monday, explaining why the incident was “nothing like” Christian bakers refusing to serve homosexual ceremonies.
“The baker in question never ejected anyone from his store for being gay. He made it clear that everyone was welcome to the part of the store that serves the public, and he would happily sell them anything in the store,” Huckabee explained. “What he declined was a separate contract job custom-designing a cake that he felt violated his religious beliefs, for the same reason he refuses to use what he considers his God-given talent to design Halloween cakes or cakes that personally attack people.”
At the beginning of the month, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had displayed impermissible religious hostility while attempting to force Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips to provide a cake for a same-sex “wedding.” Phillips had previously said he’s “happy to sell a cake to anyone, whatever his or her sexual identity,” but creating a product with a message he opposes is inherently different.
Similarly, on Monday the court ordered the Washington Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling against Barronelle Stutzman, the proprietor of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, for refusing to provide flowers for a customer’s same-sex “wedding” ceremony. Stutzman was also happy to serve and employ homosexuals, and the man suing her was even a longtime customer.
In addition to the difference between serving individuals and serving specific events or messages, virtually none of the conservative commentators or Republican lawmakers who have criticized Sanders’ treatment have suggested they want the Red Hen legally punished or forced to serve Republicans.
Huckabee noted that those celebrating the Red Hen’s actions were “making the same argument one would use in defending Southern lunch counter owners of the 1950s who refused service to black customers.”
“Although, come to think of it, those Southern lunch counter owners and the officials who defended them were Democrats, too,” he quipped. “I guess some things never change.”