Creep of the Week: Rudolph W. Giuliani

Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Or so goes the conservative Christian party line when it comes to homosexuals. It's intended to be benevolent. After all, if you're gay, they don't hate you, they just hate the disgusting, immoral, degenerate, evil things you do. And by "do" they mean "sex." After all, gays are nothing more than sodomy on legs.
In other words, "Love the sinner, hate the sin" doesn't exactly make gays feel all warm and fuzzy.
So it was alarming when Rudolph Giuliani said essentially that on Meet the Press Dec. 9. Giuliani was asked if he agreed with Mike Huckabee's statement that homosexuality is "an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle."
"No," Giuliani said. "I don't believe it's sinful."
So far so good. Unfortunately, there's more.
"My moral views on this come from the, you know, from the Catholic Church, and I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality, as a way that somebody leads their life is not, isn't sinful," he said. "It's the acts — it's the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have."
Giuliani also said, "I've had my own sins that I've had to confess."
Oh. So it's okay to be gay so long as you never have sex. Because "the various acts that people perform" are the problem. Not the people themselves.
Of course, judging from his statement, Giuliani also believes that heterosexual sex is a sin. So I guess Giuliani is going hard after the celibate vote.
It's important to note, though, that his "it's the acts that are sinful" bullshit was a response to a question about homosexuality. Had he been asked about heterosexuality, I doubt that he'd have given the same response. But then, heterosexuality isn't a campaign issue.
As for Giuliani having his "own sins" to confess, perhaps he was referring to the time he was running around on his wife. Maybe that's why he stayed with a couple of gay guys when he was separating from his wife. Perhaps he felt his sinful acts would feel right at home there.
It's pretty obvious his Meet the Press comments were an attempt to appease the religious right. After all, Giuliani's got the Log Cabin Republican vote all sewed up.
According to the New York Times, when asked to respond to Giuliani's comments, LCR Prez Patrick Sammon said, "His record and his comments speak for themselves."
This response doesn't satisfy activist Wayne Besen who wrote on his blog that he was "incredibly disappointed" in Sammon's statement.
"It is not the job of Log Cabin to play PR firm for Mr. Giuliani," Besen continued. "Their role is to inform GLBT voters, so we can make the right decisions in the voting booth. It is highly irresponsible for Log Cabin to not take the lead on this and get a clarification – unless they have so little power in the GOP, that they no longer have the slightest bit of access."
Or might Log Cabin be taking a "love the sinner hate the sin" approach of their own to Giuliani? The GOP pickings are, after all, slim.