NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — The Southern Baptist Convention's top ethicist criticized one thrice-married GOP presidential candidate March 6 for what he called “divorce on steroids.”
Richard Land, head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said evangelicals might accept a president who has been divorced. But he said former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's three marriages — and their public nature — cause considerable discomfort for many in the Religious Right.
“I mean, this is divorce on steroids,” Land told the Associated Press. “To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children — that's rough. I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control.”
Giuliani has been the leader in most recent polls of potential Republican voters for the 2008 presidential nomination. He, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are far ahead of other candidates, even though some have more solidly embraced socially conservative views.
While some religious conservatives have suggested in recent weeks that electability may be more important than ideological purity in 2008, Land said Giuliani's personal past will make his socially moderate views much less palatable.
After annulling his first marriage and ending his subsequent marriage to Donna Hanover, Giuliani married his longtime mistress, Judith Nathan, in 2003. The relationship between Nathan and Giuliani had been widely known during his marriage to Hanover.
Giuliani's children from his second marriage, Andrew and Caroline, reportedly have strained relationships with their father. Twenty-one-year-old Andrew Giuliani has said he will not participate in his father's campaign. He told The New York Times he had “a little problem” with Nathan.
“…[A]s of right now, it's not working out as well as we would like,” he said of the relationship with his stepmother.
During a recent campaign trip in California, Rudy Giuliani called Nathan a “very loving and caring … mother and stepmother.”
“[Nathan] has done everything she can,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The responsibility is mine, and I believe that these problems with blended families are challenges, sometimes they are. And the challenges are best worked on in private. The more privacy I can have for my family, the better we are going to be able to deal with all these difficulties.”
Other Republican presidential candidates have weathered divorce, including McCain. Although McCain has been married twice, Land said, the senator's other credentials and history of conservatism earn him more respect than Giuliani.
“It's a molehill compared to Giuliani's mountain,” Land said. “When you're a war hero [like McCain], you have less to prove on the character front.”
Religious conservatives have embraced another divorced presidential candidate — Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Reagan became the first divorced man to be elected as president of the United States.
According to the AP, Land said evangelicals would support Giuliani if he faced Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the general election. Still, the support would be in fewer numbers than if it was a “pro-life candidate who was still with his first wife,” Land said.
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