Rudolph Giuliani: To Support Gay Marriage or Not to Support Gay Marriage?

Giuliani Now Decides He is Against Gay Marriage

The former Republican New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani now opposes unions between gays and lesbian partners, a huge reversal from his earlier position of supporting civil unions. The political website of the New York Sun will officially report Giuliani's standpoint tomorrow. His new position was prompted by the passage of the civil union law in New Hampshire. The political site sent a copy of the article it plans to publish to various Press groups.

Back in 2004 Giuliani told Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, "I'm in favor of civil unions." When asked by Bill O'Reilly about gay and lesbian couples who felt like their marriage rights were being infringed upon, he said "That's why you have civil partnerships. So now you have a civil partnership, domestic partnership, civil union, whatever you want to call it, and that takes care of the imbalance, the discrimination, which we shouldn't have." But his position has clearly changed. Now many liberals and conservatives are wondering why.

Political experts believe that Giuliani thinks that he needs to stake out conservative views in order to win the Republican vote instead of being "too liberal." Opposing gay marriage is one way he plans to win the Right-wing vote. There are also controversies that could harm his Republican votes, including his support of public funding of abortions (clearly a liberal view).

As many remember, back in 1998, as the mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani signed into law a civil union bill that many gay and lesbian rights groups praised, evening saying that it was "a new national benchmark for domestic partner recognition

However, now, many people are confused over Giuliani's position on civil unions, especially since his long history of supporting gay and lesbian rights. The question is: does he actually support civil unions or just saying that he does not because he believes he needs the extremely conservative Republican votes?

It should also be noted that Obama, Clinton, and Edwards all support New Hampshire's new law, but directly oppose gay marriage.