For all his many, many flaws, at least Rudy Giuliani has always supported civil unions for gay couples, right? Wrong.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani continues to discard the moderate and liberal positions of his past. The latest is civil unions for same-sex couples, which the Republican presidential candidate has been backing away from in recent months.
A campaign aide told the Globe this weekend that Giuliani favors a much more modest set of rights for gay partners than civil union laws in effect in four states offer. [...]
"It's really disappointing he's stepped back from his position on civil unions," said Joe Tarver, spokesman for the Empire State Pride Alliance, a group that advocates for gay rights in New York state that worked with and against Giuliani on a number of issues during his eight years as mayor.
Calling the former mayor's shifting stance "pretty un-Giuliani-like," Tarver said: "It's quite obvious he's playing to the people whose votes he needs to get the Republican nomination."
The man is shameless. Strategically, it doesn't even make sense -- the far-right will see it as pandering, and what's left of the GOP center will be offended by the shift to the right.
