Fred Martinez's Monitor

Is Ron Paul more Pink than Mike Huckabee?

Ron Paul’s statements regarding gay marriage and homosexuality:

Marriage is first and foremost a religious matter, not a government matter. Government is not moral and cannot make us moral. Law should reflect moral standards, of course, but morality comes from religion, from philosophy, from societal standards, from families, and from responsible individuals. We make a mistake when we look to government for moral leadership.

And:

Congressman Paul’s position on gay marriage is that defining and recognizing marriages is not a Federal or constitutional matter, but should be left as the States’ right.[30] In 1999 he voted for H.R. 2587 which contained an amendment that sought to prevent the use of Federal funding for the promotion of adoptions of foster children being used to promote joint adoptions by unrelated, unmarried people. There was no mention of gay adoptions in the bill, but the amendment could have been construed to act negatively upon gay couples adopting children in the District of Columbia, and in any event was not present in the final bill.[31]

And:

I oppose federal efforts to redefine marriage as something other than a union between one man and one woman[.] … In fact, the institution of marriage most likely pre-dates the institution of government!
…
If I were in Congress in 1996, I would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act[.]
…
I was an original cosponsor of the Marriage Protection Act, HR 3313, that removes challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act from federal courts’ jurisdiction.

If I were a member of [a state] legislature, I would do all I could to oppose any attempt by rogue judges to impose a new definition of marriage on the people of my state.
…
The division of power between the federal government and the states is one of the virtues of the American political system.
…
[I]f federal judges wrongly interfere and attempt to compel a state to recognize the marriage licenses of another state, that would be the proper time for me to consider new legislative or constitutional approaches.

And:

I have not…I’m not as judgmental about that {homosexuality being a sin} 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. I believe a lot of people understand it {God saying homosexuality is a sin} that way, but I think everybody’s God’s child too, so I have, you know, trouble with that.

And:

Looking it in protecting the military {homosexuals in 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.

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posted by Fred Martinez @ 9:21 PM