Republican
presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, appearing on Meet
the Press Sunday, explained that he doesn't
believe being gay is a sin, but he said that,
heterosexual or homosexual, "it's the various
acts that people perform that are sinful." Giuliani, who
signed domestic-partner legislation into law in 1998
when he was mayor of New York, has been consistently
angling toward more conservative positions on gay
issues to appease socially conservative Republicans. He has
said he would appoint "strict constructionist" judges
in the vein of justices Samuel Alito and Antonin
Scalia to the Supreme Court and has indicated he
doesn't support civil unions if they are the equivalent
of marriage.
Republican
presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, appearing on Meet
the Press Sunday, explained that he doesn't
believe being gay is a sin, but he said that,
heterosexual or homosexual, "it's the various
acts that people perform that are sinful." Giuliani, who
signed domestic-partner legislation into law in 1998
when he was mayor of New York, has been consistently
angling toward more conservative positions on gay
issues to appease socially conservative Republicans. He has
said he would appoint "strict constructionist" judges
in the vein of justices Samuel Alito and Antonin
Scalia to the Supreme Court and has indicated he
doesn't support civil unions if they are the equivalent
of marriage.
An excerpt from
Giuliani's appearance is below, and the full transcript
is available here.
TIM RUSSERT: Mike
Huckabee, leading the field in Iowa, told the
Associated Press back in the ‘90s that AIDS patients
should be quarantined and that “homosexuality
was aberrant, unnatural, and a sinful
lifestyle.” What’s your reaction?
RUDY
GIULIANI: My reaction is that I haven’t seen ---
on the second of that, I haven’t seen
Mike’s comment. The first one, I think he
says that he didn’t have the information, that
he’s changed his mind about it, it’s not
his current position. Look, I got enough of my
own statements and issues, as we’ve seen, that I have
to deal with. I think Mike has to...
MR.
RUSSERT: But you don’t believe homosexuality is
aberrant...
MR.
GIULIANI: Oh, no, no, no.
MR.
RUSSERT: Unnatural or sinful.
MR.
GIULIANI: My, my, my -- no, I don’t believe
it’s sinful. My, my moral views on this
come from the, you know, from the Catholic Church, and
I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality as a, as a way
that somebody leads their life is not -- isn’t
sinful. It’s the acts, it’s the
various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the
-- not the orientation that they have. (The
Advocate)
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