Back in February 2004, before he was running for President, Rudy Giuliani had this to say to Bill O’Reilly on the subject of civil unions for homosexuals:

On a February 2004 edition of Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Mr. Giuliani told Bill O’Reilly, when asked if he supported gay marriage, “I’m in favor of â€¦ civil unions.” He also said, “Marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman.” Asked by Mr. O’Reilly in the interview how he would respond to gay Americans who said being denied access to the institution of marriage violated their rights, Mr. Giuliani 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.” In 1998, as mayor of New York City, Mr. Giuliani signed into law a domestic partnership bill that a gay rights group, the Empire State Pride Agenda, hailed as setting “a new national benchmark for domestic partner recognition.”

Now that’s he’s running for President, though, Ryan Sager at the New York Sun notes a rather startling departure from his previous position:

In a startling departure from his previously stated position on civil unions, Mayor Giuliani came out to The New York Sun yesterday evening in opposition to the civil union law just passed by the New Hampshire state Senate. ” Mayor Giuliani believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Domestic partnerships are the appropriate way to ensure that people are treated fairly,” the Giuliani campaign said in a written response to a question from the Sun. “In this specific case the law states same sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it.”

Why might Giuliani change his position like this ? I think it’s pretty obvious, actually. He’s running for the Republican nomination for President and he needs to pander to the Religious Right in order to win the nomination. He’s already changed his position on abortion, so it’s not surprising that he’d change his mind on this issue as well.

Because, you see, when all you care about is winning, what you believe really doesn’t matter.