Mike Huckabee announces his candidacy for the 2016 Presidential race in Hope, Arkansas Photo: Matt Sullivan/Getty Images
A Republican presidential contender has come under fire for joking that he should have pretended to be transgender in school so he could shower with girls.
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, made the comments in February but they gained widespread attention on Tuesday after new images of Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, took the internet by storm.
"I wish somebody had told me when I was in high school that I could've felt like a women when it came time to take showers in PE," he told the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention. "I'm pretty sure 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?" he continued, "and yet we're the ones who are ridiculed and scorned because we point out the obvious: there's something inherently wrong with forcing little children to be a part of this social experiment."
Mr Huckabee is a former Evangelical pastor who jolted American politics by defeating John McCain and Mitt Romney in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. He styles himself as a crusader against coastal elitism and political correctness, and is a fierce opponent of gay marriage.
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In the same speech, he bemoaned the fact that "in city after city we're seeing ordinances that say that your seven-year-old daughter, if she goes into the bathroom, cannot be offended and you can't be offended if she is greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man."
His remarks have already been criticised by one rival for the Republican nomination. George Pataki, the former governor of New York and a long-shot presidential candidate, acknowledged that Mr Huckabee's statements were "meant in humour" but suggested that they were not appropriate.
"In a government where it's supposed to be 'of the people'," he told CNN, "if someone chooses a path that is different than mine we should respect that instead of mocking it or in any way trying to prevent that."
The criticism is unlikely to trouble Mr Huckabee, who often seems to court controversy as a way of distinguishing his brand of folksy populism from the more staid styles of his rivals.
In his recent book, "Gods, Guns, Grits and Gravy", he suggested that Jay Z was sexually exploiting his wife Beyoncé for his own financial gain, and questioned President Barack Obama for allowing his daughters listen to "that trash".
In a strange coincidence, Mr Huckabee hails from the same small Arkansas town as Bill Clinton. It was there that he launched his second presidential campaign last month by warning that Americans had "lost our way morally" but promising to take the country "from hope to higher ground".
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