Giuliani. Man of acts

Rudy Giuliani was on Meet The Press this Sunday morning taking it from Russert. The whole thing was a commenters dream and left a target rich environment wide open for pot shots.

Towards the end of the show however, Giuliani said something which is truly mind boggling.

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.

MR. RUSSERT: The Congress is discussing and...

MR. GIULIANI: Which includes me, by the way. I mean, you know, unfortunately, I’ve had my own sins that I’ve had to confess and had to deal with and try to overcome and so I’m very, very empathetic with people, and that we’re all, we’re all imperfect human beings struggling to, to try to be better.

At that point, for some inexplicable reason, Russert dropped the subject and moved on to the energy bill recently passed by the House of Representatives... as though Giuliani had not just stepped in it.

How in the hell does he reconcile that statement? The orientation is OK but the acts are sinful?! That's sort of like putting the ball on the tee eighteen times and walking away without hitting it, isn't it?

Who cares about the acts? If the sexual orientation of a person doesn't matter to Giuliani, why should he even concern himself with the acts?

Truth Wins Out also noticed.

“Have Giuliani’s long held convictions on gay relationships changed in a New York minute to win the GOP nomination? If they have, then he lacks the character to be president,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Giuliani’s answer on Meet the Press seemed to parrot the religious right’s cruel and empty ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ rhetoric. We call on Giuliani to clarify what ‘acts’ he thinks are sinful and we hope he continues to respect all relationships.”

Allow me.

Rudy Giuliani suddenly remembered that a lot of those church-goin' voters he's hoping to nail down might just have a Tivo or a VCR, or they might have even skipped-out of church just to see what he was going to say. He went into instant recovery mode and tried to backtrack far enough to make himself look like bought into the religious right agenda.

Howard and Mark are probably pretty justified in feeling completely betrayed right now.