A famous donor has dropped his support for Mitt Romney‘s campaign, asked for a refund, and thrown his support to Barack Obama after the President announced his support for same-sex marriage and Mitt Romney derided it at his commencement address at Liberty University over the weekend.
Bill White, the former President of  the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, a veterans activist, and founder of the strategic consulting firm Constellations Group, wrote Mitt Romney and expressed his dissatisfaction.
“I feel that I no longer wish to support your presidential campaign and ask that you please return the maximum contribution that I gave to you last year,” Bill White wrote in a letter addressed to Romney, CNN reports:
“You have chosen to be on the wrong side of history and I do not support your run for president any longer,” White added.
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White began his letter to Romney stating, “I am currently a max donor to your 2012 presidential campaign.” He did not fundraise for the Romney campaign, though he said his partner and some friends also contributed to Romney.
In his letter, White goes on to mention the president’s public announcement of his personal support for same-sex marriage last week.
“Several days later this past Saturday to a packed stadium of young college students you made the following statement that ‘Marriage is only between one man and one woman,'” White wrote, referring to Romney’s recent commencement addressto Liberty University, an evangelical school in Lynchburg, Virginia.
“I believe that you will do as you now say and try to force a constitutional amendment which would attempt to make my own legal and blessed marriage null and void.”
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“I felt we gave ‘Hope and Change’ a chance and I was looking for something different,” White said.
“Quite frankly, I was not supporting Barack Obama – I was supporting Mitt Romney. And my support is not just words or my vote, it’s also putting my money where my mouth is.”
White said he does not agree with the president on fiscal policy – something he sides more with Romney on.
“I just think we’re spending probably money that we don’t have,” he said.
And yet, White said: “I’m looking at the television screen one day and I see my president – whether I’m Republican or Democrat, he is my president…and I’m looking at him doing one thing, one day. And two days later, I’m looking at a guy who I’m supporting for president, and who I want to be my president and who I’ve given my money to, to be president, saying something I didn’t think he would be saying.”
CNN pressed White: Why now, given that Romney’s stance is not new?
“I had a very visceral reaction to him – he had a great opportunity… to get on the right side of history,” White responded. “And to be someone to the country that helps to unite us, versus what divides us. And I just think his very proactive intention to pounce on this issue now has sent me to the other side.”
“Now, I feel like he’s declared war on my marriage. And I could just sit back and not say anything. Or I could do something about it. And I’ve chosen to do something about it.”
The New York Daily News last year reported that White “was considered in 2008 for the post of secretary of the Navy – even as the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy continued to bar gay troops from serving openly in the military.”
“That’s the reason I never went into the military,” he said. “I was open for as long as most people knew me.”
The Daily News adds that White married his longtime partner last October at New York’s iconic Four Seasons Restaurant.
The wedding – the first legal gay marriage held at the Four Seasons – drew luminaries, including singer Aretha Franklin, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Barbara Walters and [NYC] Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Franklin performed several songs, including “I Say A Little Prayer” and “Respect.” She ended her set by singing “I Will Always Love You” as the couple kissed.
Members of the Navy Junior ROTC held American flags and greeted arriving guests as the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus sang Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and other hits.
And if the White wedding wasn’t amazing enough, venerable Prop 8 lawyer David Boies officiated. The wedding announcement was published in the New York Times.