Former Arkansas governor and two-time presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has resigned from his new position on the board of the Country Music Association Foundation less than a day after he was appointed amid concerns over his anti-LGBTQ views.
The Tennessean reported Thursday that country music fans and industry heavyweights blasted the anti-gay Republican’s appointment to the board of the CMA’s charity arm as “grossly offensive.â€
Jason Owen, the co-president of Monument Records and owner at Sandbox Entertainment, said Huckabee “speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has a profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country.â€
“What a terrible disappointment to see (the CMA Foundation’s) mission clouded by the decision to align with someone who so frequently engages in the language of racism, sexism, and bigotry,â€Â Whitney Pastorek, a CMA member and manager of the popular country band Sugarland, wrote to the association prior to Huckabee’s resignation.
“While Gov. Huckabee’s tenure in Arkansas may have resulted in valuable education reform over a decade ago, I find his choice to spend the past ten years profiting off messages of exclusion and hatred (not to mention the gun lobby) to be disqualifying,†Pastorek continued in her condemnation of the former GOP candidate for president.
Image by Daniel Huizinga via Flickr and a CC license