Huckabee stands firm; Giuliani agrees, more or less

The AP (myway) reports that Mike Huckabee, in a display of constancy, courage, and leadership uncommon in this or any other presidential campaign, refuses to back down from his 1992 stance on AIDS. "I still believe this today," he said in a broadcast interview, that "we were acting more out of political correctness" in responding to the AIDS crisis. "I don't run from it, I don't recant it," he said of his position in 1992. Huckabee stated his positions then in an AP questionnaire in which he also called homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle," and this is one part of his remarks that's really stirring the pot now.

Giuliani, who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, said in response to a question that he did not believe homosexuality was aberrant. "The way somebody leads their life isn't sinful. It's the acts," said Giuliani, who supports gay rights and lived with an openly gay couple after separating from his second wife while mayor. "It's the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have." That's a bit of careful hair-splitting. To Be or to Do? Are you homosexual, or do you “do homosexuality”?

The secular among us would stop short of the candidates' “sinful” label. Few would argue against describing homosexuality as abnormal in the statistical sense. Let's adopt Giuliani's spin and restrict this discussion to acts rather than orientation. Promiscuity, debatably more common in though not exclusive to certain homosexual lifestyles, is demonstrably more effective at spreading STDs than monogamy. If the acts involved in the expression of homosexual orientation involve using body parts for other than their intended purposes or (to avoid the pitfall of divining intent from configuration) for purposes other than those to which they are biologically and medically suited, they are contraindicated for health reasons.

Sinful? Immoral? Your call. Statistically aberrant, medically problematical, epidemiologically inadvisable? Indisputably so.