New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino criticized gays Sunday, saying he didn’t want children “to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option,” compared to heterosexuality.
“It isn’t,” Paladino said at a stop in Brooklyn, New York.A prepared version of his remarks obtained by CNN from New York affiliate NY1 said that “There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual,” though Paladino did not wind up delivering that line.
“That’s not how (God) created us,” the prepared remarks continued, though Paladino did not say those words.
So just to be clear, here in the tolerant West, where we need to moderate our work to include LGBT people fully in the life of the Church so as not to get too far ahead of the rest of the Anglican Communion, a candidate for governor of the second-largest state in the country thinks it is okay to talk this way in a city that has just learned about a gruesome anti-gay hate crime committed against several of its citizens.
The New York Times is on the story. And,of course, someone had a video camera. It is worth mentioning that while Paladino’s camp says he is simply expressing the viewpoint of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church does not teach that everyone is born heterosexual.