What he "wants" may be exactly as you say. I suspect you're right, about what he "wants," in a personal sense. He is by all reports a genial man, and no puritan.
He wants the homophobe vote, though, more than he wants people's sex lives to be their own business, don't you think so? It is an explanation for what he said that is consistent with our shared belief that he'd just as soon have sexual orientation be nobody's business, and his rather startling position as stated.
What he said was that although he wouldn't fire anyone who was in position and then was discovered to be a homosexual,
he would not "knowingly" appoint a practicing homosexual as an ambassador or department head.
I believe you have misunderstood. What those words say is not that it wouldn't be "a factor either way," in your words, but rather that if he knew they were gay, he would not (for a reason not stated; on that we can only speculate, and I have speculated on it) appoint a homosexual man or woman as an ambassador or department head. |
