A Stitch in Haste

(Pretend you don't already know the answer...)

Which Republican presidential candidate said the following in a radio interview with a radical theocrat bigot:

Q: Do you believe [homosexuality] is a sin?

A: I'm not as judgmental about that probably because of my medical background, so I don't see it in those simplistic terms; I think it's a complex issue to decide whether it's sin or other problems with the way people are born. It's to me too complex to give an answer as simple as that.

Whether "being gay is a sin" is a complex issue? Too complex for a hyper-educated Twenty-First Century American to answer?

Q: We'll try to stop anyone from getting in the military who is a homosexual, who is an adulterer, who is a fornicator, and then other categories that indicate a character flaw. Why we shouldn't try to do that?"

A: Looking it in protecting the military if they are going to perform the services, and they are imperfect -- because we're all imperfect and we all sin. If a heterosexual or homosexual sins, that to me is the category of dealing with their own soul. Since we cannot have only perfect people going in the military I want to separate the two because I don't want to know the heterosexual flaws, nor the homosexual flaws and that's why I got in some trouble with some of the civil libertarians because I don't have any problem with Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Because I don't think that, for the practicality of running a military, I'd just as soon not know every serious thing that any heterosexual or homosexual did, and those flaws have to do with all our flaws because each and everyone one of us has those imperfections.

Wanting to serve openly is a "homosexual flaw"? Openly being in a committed monogamous same-sex relationship is a "serious flaw"? Military policy -- all government policy -- should be crafted based on subjective, factional notions of "sin" and not on objective standards of conduct and competency? (Oh, and he got into some trouble with "the civil libertarians" and not "my fellow civil libertarians"?)

Stepping back a bit, note how the candidate carefully crafts his answers to suit his interviewer and audience (one observer: "he weasel-words his way around this landmine and that one, instead of just saying what he thinks"). What rational basis would anyone have to conclude that this is a man of principle and not just another moral defective politician?

Answer here.