Gays and lesbians choose to live outside the laws of God
Gordon Howie believes gays and lesbians "choose to live outside the laws of God" and "vehemently" disagrees with their "lifestyle," but the independent candidate for
U.S. Senate has a position he admits might surprise some people: he supports giving same-sex couples legal rights, "as long as we don't call it marriage."
Howie is running on a socially conservative platform to bring God back into public life, and believes homosexuality is immoral. But the candidate who regularly bashes Republican nominee Mike Rounds for being insufficiently conservative is actually to
Rounds' left on one particular question of gay rights.
Howie supports civil unions for same-sex couples, while Rounds said he doesn't.
Civil unions and equal rights for gays, but not marriage
Both Howie & Rounds oppose allowing same-sex couples to legally marry. The other two candidates in the race, Democrat Rick Weiland and independent Larry Pressler, support gay marriage.
"I think it's silly not to allow those kind of things," Howie said
of letting same-sex couples file taxes jointly, have hospital visitation rights and other privileges currently limited to married couples.
Rounds, like Howie, said he believes "marriage is between a man and a woman."
Beyond that, Rounds said romantic partners can enter into contracts to do things that already are legal but opposes changing the law to allow same-sex couples privileges currently reserved for married couples.
[One pundit noted], "Very conservative
people could come to endorse civil unions by breaking it up and looking at the legal elements of it and saying, okay, we're not going to discriminate against them, and this is a different status, but that doesn't mean they're married."