GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul sat down with “Recovering Republican” and former Constitution Party presidential candidate John Lofton to talk about abortion, gays in the military, and other hot button issues on Lofton’s radio show, The American View. You can listen to the interview here (head about 24:30).

LOFTON: Do you believe it [homosexuality] is a sin? PAUL: I have not…I’m not as judgmental about that probably because of my medical background, so I don’t see it in those simplistic terms; I think it’s a complex issue to decide whether it’s sin or other problems with the way people are born. It’s to me too complex to give an answer as simple as that. LOFTON: Do you believe that God says it is a sin? PAUL: Well, I believe a lot of people understand it that way, but I think everybody’s God’s child too, so I have, you know, trouble with that. LOFTON: Well, actually everyone’s made in the image of God, but not everyone’s a child of God. Some of them are children of the devil…

Paul is then asked about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Lofton first goes into a fairly lengthy diatribe about how all sinners need to be booted from the military.

LOFTON: We’ll try to stop anyone from getting in the military who is a homosexual, who is an adulterer, who is a fornicator, and then other categories that indicate a character flaw. Why we shouldn’t try to do that?” PAUL: Looking it in protecting the military if they are going to perform the services, and they are imperfect — because we’re all imperfect and we all sin. If a heterosexual or homosexual sins, that to me is the category of dealing with their own soul. Since we cannot have only perfect people going in the military I want to separate the two because I don’t want to know the heterosexual flaws, nor the homosexual flaws and that’s why I got in some trouble with some of the civil libertarians because I don’t have any problem with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Because I don’t think that, for the practicality of running a military, I’d just as soon not know every serious thing that any heterosexual or homosexual did, and those flaws have to do with all our flaws because each and everyone one of us has those imperfections.

This is ridiculous. Again, heteronormativity blinds Paul to the fact that gays don’t want the repeal of DADT to have sex in the barracks — gays and lesbians simply do not want to hide their orientation. Heterosexuals serving our country are able to speak openly about their lives — a partner back home, for instance, without fearing that they will be kicked out of the military. Heterosexuality, and the culture that surrounds it, is everywhere, presumed and affirmed.

BTW, Lofton goes on to say that “God will not bless an army or a military that is full of unrepentent, practicing homosexuals, and adulterers and fornicators.”

Hat tip, Nick S.