Mitt Romney channeled the social conservative positions of Rick Santorum during last night’s GOP presidential debate in Arizona, arguing that religious organizations should be allowed to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples in the adoption process and claiming that children deserve a home “with a mother and a father”:
ROMNEY: And when we have programs that say we’re going to teach abstinence in schools, the liberals go crazy and try and stop us from doing that. We have to have a president who’s willing to say that the best opportunity an individual can give to their unborn child is an opportunity to be born in a home with a mother and a father. [...]
We battled, for instance, to help the Catholic Church stay in the adoption business. The amazing thing was that while the Catholic Church was responsible for half the adoptions in my state — half the adoptions — they had to get out of that business because the legislature wouldn’t support me and give them an exemption from having to place children in homes where there was a mom and a dad on a preferential basis.
Watch it:
In 2006, however, Romney seemed to accept the idea that same-sex couples can adopt a child. “They are able to adopt children…And I’m not going to change that,” he said, noting that same-sex couples have “a legitimate interest” in adoption. “Obviously, that’s their right,” he explained in 2007.
But in aiming to secure the GOP presidential nomination for 2012, the former Massachusetts governor has walked back his support for gay and lesbian families and has adopted a more nuanced position on same-sex adoption. During an August GOP debate, Romney pledged to institute a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as a between a man and a woman “because I believe the ideal place to raise a child is in a home with a mom and dad.” He doubled down on that position during a town hall in New Hampshire in October, arguing that while he would support “partnership agreements” for same-sex couples, “the ideal setting to raise a child for a society like ours is where there is a man and a woman.”
Ultimately, the Romney campaign maintains that same-sex adoption “should be assessed on a state-by-state basis,” a point the candidate himself failed to make in trying to close the gap between himself and Santorum at Wednesday night’s debate.
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