See Huckabee's remarks:
Apparently former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's humorous rationale for barring men from using facilities designated only for women was too hot for YouTube to handle.
WND's entire YouTube channel was suspended for a "terms of service violation" after a video was posted of Huckabee's remarks at the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, in February.
Amid the fanfare about former Olympic star Bruce Jenner's transformation into "Caitlyn," the social-media-driven news site BuzzFeed spotlighted Huckabee's remarks about so-called transgender bathroom laws, which spread like wildfire to political websites such as Politico, The Hill, Time.com, Slate and CNN.
Huckabee, who announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential nomination last month, was speaking about new laws that allow people, based on their "perceived gender," to use facilities designated for the opposite sex.
“For those who do not think that we are under threat, simply recognize that the fact that we are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your 7-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom cannot be offended and you can’t be offended if she’s greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man.”
Huckabee then made a reference to a fantasy of high-school boys to illustrate what he sees as the absurdity of transgender bathroom laws.
“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” said Huckabee. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’
"You’re laughing because it sounds so ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
'Violations'
Meanwhile, on WND's YouTube page was the message: "This account has been suspended due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, gaming, misleading content, or other Terms of Service violations."
Often individual videos are flagged by readers because of content and pulled from the site. YouTube has offered no specific explanation to WND for suspending the account, which makes all WND videos unavailable. (Editor's note: The WND TV YouTube account was restored after this article was published, but YouTube still has not explained its actions.)
In his speech, Huckabee said there was “something inherently wrong about forcing little children to be a part of this social experiment.”
“And yet today we are the ones who are ridiculed and scorned because we point out the obvious,” he said.
Huckabee emphasized: "I’m not against anybody. I’d just like for somebody to bring their brain to work some day and not leave it on the bed stand when they show up to govern."
A Slate.com article by Mark Joseph Stern on Huckabee's remarks said "the trans movement is at an interesting crossroads in the United States right now."
"On the one hand, a high-profile figure like Caitlyn Jenner can come out on the cover of a national magazine and receive plaudits for her courage from liberals and centrists," he wrote. "On the other hand, a perpetual Republican presidential candidate like Mike Huckabee can use trans people as a political piñata, ridiculing them as freaks and predators."
In a Los Angeles Times story that noted Huckabee's February remarks being reported the day after Vanity Fair's cover featuring Jenner, reporter Kurtis Lee said Huckabee's "views on social issues, particularly his opposition to same-sex marriage, play well with GOP primary voters, but appear to be out of step with the broader national electorate."
Laws across the nation allowing people to use facilities based on their "perceived gender" have prompted counter-legislation. WND reported in February Democrats in the Colorado state legislature, for example, killed a bill that would allow school officials and business owners to restrict bathroom and locker room access to people of the same biological sex.
The legislation was a response, prompted by the concerns of parents, to a 2008 law to provide "equal accommodation" to restrooms and locker rooms for individuals based on the gender with which they identify, rather than the gender identified at birth.
See Huckabee's entire speech at the 2015 NRB convention:
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