Mitt Romney last week thanked Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council “for their leadership” in a pre-recorded video address to the Values Voters Summit, an annual conservative convention sponsored by anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association. In his video, he specifically mentioned Rick Santorum — possibly the most anti-LGBT politician during the 2012 presidential race — and stated:
We need a President who understands that we will not have a strong economy unless we have strong communities and strong families. This isn’t conjecture or some quaint belief, it’s evidenced by a Brookings Institution study that Rick Santorum brought to my attention some time ago. For those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and wait until they’re 21 until they marry and then have their first child, the probability that they will be poor is 2 percent, but if those things are absent, the probability of becoming poor is 76 percent. In short, culture matters, and as President, I’ll protect our culture and preserve the values of hard work, personal responsibility, family, and faith.
Mitt Romney is conflating several disparate issues.
First, no one is “anti-family.” All the LGBT community is trying to do is have the concept of family legally applies to our relationships — which include marriages and the raising of children.
Second, no one is anti-strong economy. The LGBT community is merely looking for protections — the same ones most others have — to level the playing field, so we, too can build strong families and a strong economy.
But when Romney states, “culture matters,” he launches into an attack on our families and our ability to protect them. Romney adds, “as President, I’ll protect our culture and preserve the values of hard work, personal responsibility, family, and faith.”
That “culture” Romney is talking about is applicable only to heterosexual members of the Christian faith. (Mormons are Christians by definition, and this is not a debate about Mormonism.)
Curiously, Romney points to Rick Santorum, who this very weekend, at the same event — the Values Voters Summit –Â came out and stated:
“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country,” Santorum told the Values Voters. “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.”
That “smart people… believe they should have the power to tell you what to do,” is hogwash and Santorum, who would love to legislate against abortion and a woman’s right to choose, against same-sex marriage, against pre-marital sex, against funding education, and legislate the Bible into the Constitution — just for starters — is the one who wants to control Americans.
So, why is Mitt Romney using Rick Santorum to build his anti-LGBT policies when Santorum states that “smart people” don’t support his ideas?
“Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is [sic] no basic values in America, in force, and there is no future for our country.”
This is the very definition of theocracy.
Listen clearly. Mitt Romney is bowing to the “values” of Rick Santorum, embracing anti-LGBT hate, embracing the Bible as the Constitution (today, by the way, is Constitution Day,) and embracing a class society in which the old white heterosexual Christian men make all the rules.
Mitt Romney is embracing a society the ‘smart people” aren’t.
Shouldn’t that, right there, tell you something?
Romney transcript via Think Progress. Santorum video via Right Wing Watch.