There Goes the Log Cabin Vote

"Mike Huckabee," the AP reports, "once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could 'pose a dangerous public health risk.'"

If the preacher is planning to go Reaganesque in his surge toward the GOP nomination, this news will not sit well with the 47 chapters of the Long Cabin Republicans, who got their start in California in 1977 when the Great Communicator opposed an anti-gay ballot initiative against teachers and helped defeat it.

Reagan wrote a letter outlining his views, in which he said, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."

In contrast, answering a questionnaire when he was running for the Senate in 1992, Huckabee wrote: "It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."

The former Arkansas governor won't be making any new friends in Hollywood either when they learn he opposed federal funding for AIDS research and suggest that celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna who support it do so "out of their own personal treasuries."

But as a candidate this year, Huckabee did a little flip-flopping on his web site: "My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals."

Huckabee and Mitt Romney might have bumped into each other racing toward new positions on gays from opposite directions. But he could make a new friend in Lou Dobbs, who wants to treat illegal immigrants as lepers, too.