The debate over whether or not people should be able to pick which bathrooms and locker rooms they use based on their self-reported gender identity often centers around one issue: whether or not it would put the girls in these spaces at risk.

Those against the idea argue that if all a man had to do was simply say he identified as a woman in order to gain access to these spaces, voyeuristic sexual predators would have license to spy on all the naked girls they wanted — leaving the girls with no defense against these kind of terrible people.

Those in favor of the policy, however, maintain that it’s ignorant and offensive to associate the transgender community with the kind of people who would engage in such despicable behavior. They’re just trying to pee!

Now, notice that both sides accept the same premise: A man who would pretend to be a woman to look at innocent girls naked is a bad person.

So just one question: Why on earth would Governor Huckabee think it was a good move to suggest, even jokingly, that he is one of these people?

“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,” Huckabee joked at the 2015 National Religious (!) Broadcasters Convention a few months ago.

“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,’” he added.

Uh . . . ew.

#related#Here’s what I don’t understand: Huckabee has been trying to brand himself as a socially conservative candidate — one committed to saving our morally bankrupt country from its inevitable demise with a healthy dose of Christian values — and it kind of seems like saying you wish you could go back to high school so you could connive your teacher into letting you look at high-school girls naked might not be the best move for that brand.

Joke or not — what good did Huckabee think that placing that kind of image in voters’ minds would do for his own? After all, no one wants a creepy-uncle-in-chief.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.