REHM: And another question. “You've written in your columns of homosexuality, that in a healthy society, it will be contained, segregated, controlled, and stigmatized. You've also called homosexuality a disorder that can be handled with therapy. Do you still stand by those statements?”
BUCHANAN: Well, the statement that homosexuality is disordered is a statement from Pope Benedict in Rome, as well. It's the view of the Catholic Church.
REHM: And you accept that?
BUCHANAN: Well, I believe that homosexuality is -- that it is unnatural activity. Unnatural and immoral. I realize individuals are maybe born -- nature or nurture, I don't know what it is -- I assume nobody actually gets to be 13 or 14 and suddenly chooses this. But I do think -- and people may not be able to control their orientation -- but I do believe as a Catholic that people can control their conduct. And that is where I think, I would say, that kind of conduct should be discouraged in a good society, in a healthy society. And it used to be discouraged. And I do think that the idea that men can marry men and women marry women in the USA is a sign of a civilization in its final throes. I mean, we saw things like this at the end of the Weimar Republic. Things like this at the end of the Roman Empire. And they are attendant to a declining nation and a declining civilization.
REHM: So if you were in charge somehow, you would outlaw these behaviors?
BUCHANAN: No, I would -- I think the way we did it for 200 years in this country, this great melting pot country -- was we left it to the states to decide. And that's what I would do.
REHM: Leave it to the states to --
BUCHANAN: Yeah, I disagreed with the Supreme Court decision. Was it Lawrence, I believe was the name of the Supreme Court decision that struck down seventeen state laws? I disagreed with that decision and I agreed with Judge Scalia's dissent.
