NEW YORK — New York’s Republican gubernatorial hopeful, Carl Paladino, insisted Monday he was not “homophobic” and would hire gay people into his administration, but he said children should not be exposed to gay people and described gay-pride marches as “disgusting” events involving scantily clad adults grinding against one another.
“I’m not a homophobic,” Paladino told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in response to accusations from his Democratic rival, Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo’s campaign said Paladino had displayed “stunning homophobia” when he told Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn on Sunday that he did not want his children “brainwashed” into thinking homosexuality was a good lifestyle.
“Don’t misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way,” Paladino told the synagogue gathering. “I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn’t.”
On ABC, Paladino said he had a gay nephew — “a wonderful boy” — and understood the discrimination gay people faced. “I have no reservations whatsoever about gays, except for gay marriage,” Paladino said. On NBC’s “Today Show,” he vowed that gays could hold jobs and play important roles in his administration if he were elected. “Which roles?” interviewer Matt Lauer asked. “Wherever their expertise might be, we’ll put them in our government,” Paladino said.
While describing discrimination against gays as “horrible” and “terrible,” Paladino told ABC and NBC that Cuomo, the state’s attorney general, was wrong to march in a gay-pride parade and erred in taking his children to watch one of the marches. “Young children should not be exposed to that at a young age,” he said on NBC. “They don’t understand this very difficult thing.”
The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based gay-advocacy group, said Paladino had made himself the “poster boy” for divisive leadership.
