Iowa-based conservative group The Family Leader last week asked Republican presidential candidates to sign a document that pledges opposition to marriage equality, infidelity and Sharia law.
It's an absolutely unnecessary and offensive covenant, yet at least two GOP presidential hopefuls, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, have already signed onto the vow, which also claims black children were better off in 1860, slave days, and that homosexuality is a choice.
But Gary Johnson, a libertarian Republican candidate, refuses to follow suit, and yesterday described the document as "offensive to the principles of liberty and freedom on which this country was founded."
"The Republican Party cannot be sidetracked into discussing these morally judgmental issues," said Johnson, a former New Mexico governor who supports marijuana legalization and civil unions.
Johnson continued, "While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn't fit in a Norman Rockwell painting."
The governor also insists, "This type of rhetoric is what gives Republicans a bad name." And he's right.
Read all of Johnson's comments, AFTER THE JUMP…
From the candidate's website:
Government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults. I have always been a strong advocate of liberty and freedom from unnecessary government intervention into our lives. The freedoms that our forefathers fought for in this country are sacred and must be preserved. The Republican Party cannot be sidetracked into discussing these morally judgmental issues — such a discussion is simply wrongheaded. We need to maintain our position as the party of efficient government management and the watchdogs of the “public's pocket book”.
“This ‘pledge' is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn't fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue'.
While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn't fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.
The Republican Party cannot afford to have a Presidential candidate who condones intolerance, bigotry and the denial of liberty to the citizens of this country. If we nominate such a candidate, we will never capture the White House in 2012. If candidates who sign this pledge somehow think they are scoring some points with some core constituency of the Republican Party, they are doing so at the peril of writing off the vast majority of Americans who want no part of this ‘pledge' and its offensive language.
