Rudy Loves The Sinner
(And The Doublespeak)

Yesterday on Meet The Press, Rudy Giuliani was asked if he agreed with Mike Huckabee that homosexuality was an “aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle” Giuliani: “No, I don’t believe it’s sinful. My moral views on this come from the Catholic Church. I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality, as a way of somebody leads their life isn’t sinful. It’s the acts—it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have.”

From the NY Observer:

This sort of tortured logic has characterized Mr. Giuliani’s stated positions on social issues throughout the presidential campaign. He has tried to play the same middle ground game on abortion, with an equally incomprehensible result. He has stuck with his long-standing position that a woman has the right to choose whether to have an abortion. But, to soften the blow to the right, he promises that he’ll pack the courts with “strict constructionists”—jurists who could make it possible for women to be thrown in prison for exercising a choice that Mr. Giuliani believes they have the right to make.

A few weeks ago, it seemed like none of this would matter: So much of the right was predisposed to like Mr. Giuliani and view him as most electable Republican that they’d rationalize their way to accepting his half-hearted social issues rhetoric. But then came Bernie Kerik, Judi-gate, business dealings with Qatar, all conspiring to send his poll numbers into decline.

Mr. Giuliani is gamely coming up with ever more novel excuses for his newfound conservative beliefs. The question now is whether conservatives are still willing to make excuses for him

As the Observer article notes, for Republicans there’s no such thing as being too conservative on gay rights. But no matter how Rudy tries to spin his past, the simple fact is that he was once our friend. What a strange irony that the left can now use that against him.
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