Carl Paladino now says he is a big supporter of gay rights, which in his case means that despite the fact that he considers their sexual orientation “invalid,” he still feels that, l ike child molesters and criminals, they deserve basic Constitutional rights…except gay marriage, of course.
The GOP candidate for governor of New York chose a day just barely removed from a series of vicious attacks on gay men, and just a couple of weeks after a gay Rutgers student was humiliated into suicide by a cruel “prank,” to proclaim to a gathering of Hasidic Jews that he does not want children to be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option,” and criticized his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, for marching in the city’s Gay Pride parade, saying,”I didn’t march in the Gay Pride parade this year. My opponent did. And that’s not the example that we should be showing our children and certainly not in our schools.” But Mr. Paladino isn’t homophobic; oh no! He just thinks children should be taught that they shouldn’t hang around with gays, like, you know, lepers, winos, and cannibals.
That these comments were ignorant and offensive is beyond argument (being gay is not an “option”); that to make them after New York gays have so recently been subjected to brutal bigotry and hate shows a stunning lack of responsibility, common sense, and empathy by Paladino, who came perilously close to endorsing hate and violence.
He is, to be blunt (a quality that Paladino admires), an ethics cement-head, who is driven by ignorance and reckless disregard for human beings he seems incapable of comprehending as anything but second-class citizens to put gay Americans in mortal peril. His explanation is that the Catholic Church teaches him such bigotry.
The Catholic Church has been wrong many times in its long history, and this is one of those times. But even the Church has never advocated making ignorant statements when they can do the maximum harm. That part is Carl Paladino’s fault, and he doesn’t see it, even now.
What an awful candidate…and an Ethics Dunce.
Ethics Alarms 
Pingback: Ethics Dunce: Carl Paladino « Ethics Alarms « Ethics Find
But Paladino was just doing what lazy politicians do: preaching to the converted. The ultra-orthodox Hasidic community would find his irrationality quite logical since they hold the same inherently contradictory views. Homosexuality is categorically forbidden by the Torah BUT, as with the Catholic church, it is quite permissible as long as it is not acted upon sexually — the Torah only forbids homosexual intercourse, not homosexual desires. Uhhhh . . . .
Jack,
This isn’t to suggest that I disagree, but from the Pope’s point of view YOU’RE the unethical one. What makes you more right than him?
-Neil
Easy—Morality versus ethics, Neil—and morality only has an argument if the ethics support it. Ask the Pope what’s wrong with homosexuality, and he can only provide myths, legends, tradition and fear-based edicts from ancient “moral authorities” who were dealing with a completely different culture. The Pope can’t say I’m unethical; all he can do is say I’m immoral, under his code. He’s not thinking; he’s obeying. And his code is ignorant, out-dated, gratuitously harmful nonsense, at least on this topic.
Palladino can say the gays disgust him, and I can’t dispute it. If he says they are “disgusting” in general, he better have something better than “they aren’t natural”—despite the fact that they exist in abundance in nature. It bigotry, pure and simple. Bigotry that relies on the Bible is still bigotry.
Odd question, but since you’re on the topic of what people find “disgusting”, what’s your view on obscenity laws? I know you’ve castigated several of them throughout the course of your writing, but nothing systematic (I’m not sure if the “Ick Factor” stuff counts).
Obscenity is in the eye of the beholder. As long as children, corpses and animals aren’t being abused and everyone is consenting, as long as the acts themselves aren’t illegal, there is nothing unethical about pornography, and I believe it is protected speech under the First Amendment.