A promise to discriminate

I wrote just a couple days ago about the pledge that Iowa's The Family Leader requested GOP prez. candidates sign. I noted then that Michelle Bachmann signed. Since then Rick Santorum has also signed.

However, Gary Johnson (I hear you asking who?), a candidate from the libertarian branch of the party, refused, blasting the pledge as "offensive to the principles of liberty and freedom on which this country was founded." And, "This type of rhetoric is what gives Republicans a bad name." It sure does.

I like this guy's thinking, at least on gay issues (he is GOP after all).

Here's excerpts from his statement.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.