By John Dempsey, WLS-AM News
CHICAGO) Erika Harold, the Republican front-runner for Illinois Attorney General, is responding to a report that she made anti gay comments in the year 2000, saying she does not remember making the comments but if she did, “It was absolutely wrong.”
NBC 5 reports that when Harold ran for Miss Illinois in the year 2000, pageant interviewers asked her if it would be better to place a child in foster care with a loving gay couple, or with a heterosexual couple who were known child abusers. NBC 5 quoted several sources in the room who say Harold responded it would be better to place such a child with the abusers.
Harold, who was 19 years old at the time, told “The Big John and Ramblin’ Ray Show” Friday morning on WLS that she does not remember making the comments, but if she did she is sorry.
“As I’ve stated, I don’t recall the specific exchanges alleged by those sources” said Harold. “If I said it, it was absolutely wrong. But what I’m happy to make perfectly clear, is that I support same-sex adoption, and same-sex foster parenting because we need more loving homes and places for children to be loved and cared for.”
Harold also admitted during the WLS interview that she most likely would not have supported gay adoption when she was 19.
“I have changed. Certainly at the time I would not have supported same sex adoption, same-sex foster parenting and that was wrong. Like many people during that time it was a different era. And there were a lot of people who held that position, and I think there are a lot of people who have evolved like me”, said Harold.
Earlier this week, Harold’s Republican primary opponent in the Attorney General’s race, Gary Grasso, told Big John and Ramblin’ Ray that if Harold made the anti-gay comment 18 years ago, it was wrong.
“Given a question she was going to choose child abusers to place a foster child instead of into a loving gay family”, said Grasso. “You know I’m sorry, that’s a profound lack of judgement even when you’re at that age.”
Harold won the Miss Illinois title in 2002 and Miss America in 2003. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois and received her law degree from Harvard in 2007. She ran unsuccessfully for Congress in the 2014 Republican Primary against 13th District incumbent Rodney Davis,
Harold is a devout Christian but she told WLS Friday morning that some of her views have evolved as she has grown older.
“There is a consensus that we need to provide children with more safe and loving homes and I think it’s important that people be able to evolve” said Harold. “In politics it’s important that you change your position if you realize that it was wrong. There’s no point in defending positions that you may have held just because you may have held them. I think we need to be a place where people can evaluate, and pay attention to changing norms and new evidence and have humility and say ‘I was wrong.'”
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