Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich
criticized gay marriage during Saturday night's Republican debate in
New Hampshire.
The issue came up when a Yahoo! News
reader asked, “Given that you oppose gay marriage, what do you want
gay people to do who want to form loving, committed, long-term
relationships? What is your solution?” Romney and Gingrich
answered that while they support limited protections for gay and
lesbian couples, both believe marriage should remain a heterosexual
union.
Gingrich offered a two-part answer,
which included the suggestion that gay couples are merely friends and
that the media was biased on the issue.
“I think what I would say is do we
want to make it possible to have those things that are most
intimately human between friends occur … For example, you run a
hospital. If there are visitation hours, should you be allowed to
stay there. There ought to be ways to designate that. You want to
have someone in your will, there ought to be ways to designate that.”
“But there's a huge jump from being
understanding and considerate and concerned, which we should be, to
saying we're therefore going to institute the sacrament of marriage
as though it has no basis. The sacrament of marriage was based on
man and woman, has been for 3,000 years, is at the core of our
civilization, and is something worth protecting and upholding.”
Gingrich drew applause from the
audience when he scolded the media.
“You don't hear the opposite question
asked. Should the Catholic church be forced to close its adoption
services in Massachusetts because it won't accept gay couples? Which
is exactly what the state has done. Should the Catholic church be
driven out from providing charitable services in the District of
Columbia because it won't give in to secular bigotry? Should the
Catholic church find itself discriminated against by the Obama
administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and
the bigotry of the administration.”
“The bigotry question goes both ways
and there's a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is
concern on the other side and none of it gets covered by the news
media.”
Romney said allowing gay couples to
marry could cause problems in education and religion.
“To say that marriage is something
other than the relationship between … a man and a woman, I think,
is a mistake,” Romney said.
New Hampshire holds its presidential
primary on Tuesday.