Carl Paladino strikes again. You really now have to wonder how many New Yorkers of both parties and no party and now screaming “Oh, Mommy, please make him stop, Mommy, make this man shut up”:
Carl Paladino says it’s not okay to be gay.
“There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual,” the Republican gubernatorial candidate told a small Hasidic group at K’hal Adas Kasho synagogue in Williamsburg today.
“That’s not how god created us, and that’s not the example that we should be showing our children.”
Paladino, who has made his opposition to the gay marriage and “the homosexual agenda” clear, went much further yesterday, to say children “would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family” than being gay.”
“And I don’t want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option,” he said. “It isn’t.”
And his timing is TRULY amazing:
The speech came just days after the suicide of a gay Rutgers student and an anti-gay gang attack in the Bronx.
His Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, blasted the remarks as “stunning homophobia and a glaring disregard for basic equality.”
A campaign spokesman said “These comments along with other views he has espoused make it clear that he is way out of the mainstream and is unfit to represent New York.”
Not just that: there have been a slew of stories and a major CNN program on the fact that a batch of gay high school students have taken their lives in recent months due to bullying. The issue is a national one and emotions run high:
A spate of teen suicides linked to anti-gay harassment is prompting school officials nationwide to rethink their efforts against bullying — and in the process, risk entanglement in a bitter ideological debate.
The conflict: Gay-rights supporters insist that any effective anti-bullying program must include specific components addressing harassment of gay youth. But religious conservatives condemn that approach as an unnecessary and manipulative tactic to sway young people’s views of homosexuality.
It’s a highly emotional topic. Witness the hate mail — from the left and right — directed at Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District while it reviews its anti-bullying strategies in the aftermath of a gay student’s suicide.
The invective is “some of the worst I’ve ever seen,” Superintendent Dennis Carlson said. “We may invite the Department of Justice to come in and help us mediate this discussion between people who seem to want to go at each other.”
Paladino is a walking example of someone who appeals to the worst instincts in Americans.
My betting is: New Yorkers have better instincts.
He will lose by a significant margin — and will be offered his own talk show.
And get big ratings.
Now you can follow Joe Gandelman on Twitter.
UPDATE: The Politico:
Carl Paladino, who’s made a few stops in heavily religious Jewish areas of Brooklyn today, has said during at least one stop that he will veto a gay marriage bill if he is governor, a pledge he made on another visit with Orthodox Jews a few weeks ago.
Both Azi Paybarah of WNYC and Newsday’s Reid Epstein have tweeted that Paladino is midway through another speech and touched on homosexuality, saying, per Azi, “I don’t want [kids] brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is an equal valid…option….
UPDATEx2: Katzblog tweets that this line was in the prepared text, although Epstein tweets it was left out when he spoke: “There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual. that is not how G-d created us.”
It’s worth noting that the view that Paladino appears to be describing about homosexuality is not unpopular in the ultra-religious Orthodox community, and as I said before, he’s pledged to veto the gay marriage bill. But in the general election, it’s a tougher position citywide, where any candidate needs a chunk of the vote.
We already knew Tea Party-backed New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is sort of racist, and definitely a hypocrite. It was only a matter of time before Carl Paladino said a bunch of homophobic stuff. That time is now!
While Carl Paladino had made his opposition to same-sex marriage widely known throughout the campaign, Sunday marked his first foray into the type of anti-gay rhetoric typically reserved for the most ardent of social conservatives.
This in the wake of the Bronx gay-torture case and the recent spate of teen gay suicides. Are there no extremes to which the current Republican party will not just use but embrace?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.