So it's come to this: We're listening to "Icky Carl" Paladino prattle about the homosexual "option"?

"My feelings on homosexuality are unequivocal. I have absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. My only reservation is marriage. That's the only reservation I have."

-- "Icky Carl" Paladino, yesterday with Matt Lauer (hmmm)

by Ken

The Ickman, who says he has "lots of homosexuals" working in his organization, goes further, saying, "The discrimination against homosexuals is horrible. It's terrible."

It's not so easy to tell from what the Ickman says what he actually believes. His most fully considered "thinking" on the subject of homosexuality appears to be, as he opines to Matt Lauer, that "it's very, very, very difficult."

But let's set that aside for a moment. Who would have thought that in the year 2011 it would be not just possible but necesssary for a candidate for statewide office, even in New York State (which has its pockets of liberalism, yes, but as a whole is far less liberal than many non-New Yorkers seem to imagine), to insist such an insistence, to be devoting so much time to damage control in the wake of the firestorm caused by his incendiary prepared remarks to a gathering of frothingly homophobic Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood Sunday.

JUST FOR THE RECORD, HERE'S WHAT
THE ICKMAN ACTUALLY SAID SUNDAY

One point worth making in Icky Carl's, er, defense is that he's reading so haltingly, it isn't absolutely clear that he even knows what he's talking about, let alone is speaking from deep-rooted belief.


[Reading, um, rather haltingly] "We must stop pandering to the pornographers and perverts, who seek to target our children and destroy their lives. I didn't march in a gay parade this year, a Gay Pride parade this year. My opponent did, and that's not the example that we should be showing our children, and certainly not in our schools. And don't misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual, uh, people in any way. That would be a dastardly lie. My approach is, 'Live and let live.' 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 to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn't."

Sure enough, on the radio this morning there was the Ickman declaring that he's not a bigot. Matt Lauer, to his credit, tries to follow up on what the Ickman says in this interview, and points out that his remarks weren't about "gay marriage"; they were about homosexuality involving "brainwashing" and not being "an equally valid or successful option." The closest thing he gets to an answer is that "that remark has to do with schooling and children." Children, he thinks, are too young to be exposed to it -- "it" referring equally, it appears, to homosexuality in general, and to homosexuality as an "option," and to homosexuality as expressed in one of those Gay Pride parades he sneers at Andrew Cuomo for marching in with his daughter.

(Of course, to the Ickman a Gay Pride parade is a gathering of men in tiny Speedos grinding against each other. Well, I guess we all tend to see what we want to see. In Icky Carl's case this appears to be men in tiny Speedos grinding against each other.)

The Ickman is indignant about being held to account for even worse things in the prepared text, things he explains that he crossed out in the car on the way to Williamsburg. Which answers one of the real mysteries about the speech: Yes, he actually had read it before delivering it. And note that his story about the "paragraph" that contained the blatantly homophobic stuff changes.

He acknowledges that yes, material for the speech was provided by the Hasidic homophobes he would be speaking to, and apparently dumped into the prepared text without processing other than the candidate's car-borne read-through. Again Matt follows up and tries to clarify whether some of the deleted stuff that has been reported was from the supplied material or was staff-written, and at first the Ickman says he doesn't know. But when Matt begins to suggest that the candidate, who feels so abused for being held responsible for any words other than those he actually speaks, might bear some responsibility for prepared material his staff puts in his hands, he's suddenly able to say with assurance that all the stuff he deleted -- that stuff was not written by his staff.

So maybe it was only the leaders of the people to whom the Ickman would be speaking who think that homosexuality is "abnormal" and homosexuals are "dysfunctional." And again, taking Icky Carl at his word for how the speech was, er, "written" and "revised," I think there's something positive to take away about Where We Are Now -- that he wouldn't say the worst stuff that was written for him (by whomever), that he refused to pander to the homo-hating Hasidim as generously as they hoped. And as the video shows, he really did express a "Live and let live" attitude toward the gays.

Still, looking at the video, does anyone doubt that the Ickman went to Williamsburg to pander to his homophobic audience, or that those Hasidic homophobes considered themselves well-pandered-to?

The crucial point in the Ickman's remarks as delivered, which Matt Lauer tries to understand his thinking on, is the disconnect between his declared "Live and let live" philosophy, with his categorical denunciation of discrimination against homosexuals, and his branding of homosexuality as not just an "option" but a not-so-successful and not-so-valid one. Does he really believe that there's no connection between announcing such views and people who hear them discriminating against gays? (As far as I can tell, yes, he seems to believe that.)

Here it's worth going back to the first line of damage control that the Ickman's staff tried to apply to the breaking crisis: that the candidate's views were in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Sensibly, the candidate doesn't seem to have fallen in line with that argument -- it's not likely to be a winning political one. Probably he thinks he's come a long way from those teachings, and indeed "Live and let live" is not Church doctrine if it includes permission to, shall we say, grind those tiny Speedos together in private, just so long as the kiddies can't see.

Nothing we know about Icky Carl suggests that he has a high degree of sexual squeamishness, as long as it's of the (grown-up and straight) "boys will be boys" variety. With that polite veneer of Church-inspired hypocrisy, he seems pretty much a "law of the jungle" kind of guy in matters sexual as well as economic. His primordial economic views are probably a better reason to hope to see him trounced in next month's gubernatorial vote. But his social views don't inspire a lot of confidence either.

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