Power

One Presidential Candidate Condemns Conservative “Family” Pledge

Gary Johnson speaks out against the group, calling the pledge "offensive."

Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum signed the pledge eagerly.  Most other GOP presidential candidates stayed noticeably silent on it.  But only Gary Johnson, former New Mexico governor and longshot GOP candidate, called the pledge out for what it was — offensive.

The Des Moines Register reports:

“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 Family Leader, who is positioning themselves as the gatekeeper to the Iowa evangelical right, has already pulled back on their language that they say could have been “misconstrued” to imply African Americans were better off under slavery.  They have said nothing about the covert “quiverful” code language embedded in their pledge.