Mitt Romney last week told Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition that he would “propose and promote” a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in the U.S., and attacked President Obama by jumping on the false Republican “war on religion” train.
“There’s been an assault on marriage,” Romney said in the Faith and Freedom teleconference. “I think he [Obama] is very aggressively trying to pave the path to same-sex marriage. I would unlike this president defend the Defense of Marriage Act. I would also propose and promote once again an amendment to the constitution to define marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.”
Karen Ocamb at LGBT|POV writes an in-depth and worthwhile report on Romney, noting:
With the Jan. 24 release of Mitt Romney’s 2010 tax returns and a summation from 2011, the nation got a glimpse of how committed he is to his Mormon faith – tithing the expected 10% of his income to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. In 2010, that contribution was $1.5 million or about 7% percent of his adjusted gross income. In 2011, Romney tithed $2.6 million, or 12.4 percent of his income, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
This is significant, considering the role the Mormon Church played in passing Prop 8 in California in 2008. After a public backlash, the Mormon Church fell quiet but, according to Mormon-watcher Fred Karger, they were just as involved in stripping rights for same sex couples the following year in Maine. But the Mormon Church was only one part of the troika: the other two significant players were Christian evangelicals and the Catholic-backed National Organization for Marriage. The Republican Establishment candidate Romney has signed NOM’s antigay marriage pledge and the group has called him a “marriage champion.â€
Ocamb also reveals a staggering $500,000 donation to NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, by AMWAY, and points to audio, that NOM pirated from the folks at Right Wing Watch, who add:
Romney used the conference call to pick up the same rhetoric used by unsuccessful candidates like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann and dish out red meat to Religious Right voters.
One last note. Who is Ralph Reed? Glad you asked.
Below is the full clip from Right Wing Watch, not the pirated one from NOM. For the above quote, forward to 1:50.