Leading Christian conservatives Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer have knocked President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage.

Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), and Bauer, who once led the organization, appeared Sunday on CNN's State of the Union.

Perkins praised presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney's Saturday speech at Christian Liberty University, in which he attempted to find common ground with evangelicals and reiterated his opposition to gay marriage just days after the president's endorsement.

“You can't gloss over the theological differences between the Mormon faith and evangelicals but he zeroed in on the common values. And people that have been involved in the states, 32 states that have worked on marriage, passing those marriage initiatives, the Mormon Church has been very involved working shoulder to shoulder with [the] evangelical church,” said Perkins.

Both said the president's new stance on marriage between members of the same sex would hurt him at the polls in November.

“I think the president this past week took six or seven states he carried in 2008 and put them in play with this one ill-conceived position …,” said Bauer.

Perkins said he does not believe Obama is using the issue as a political distraction but rather believes “this who he is.”

Crowley interrupted when Perkins added, “But that's not where America is,” to note that polling shows a majority of Americans are with the president on the issue. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this panel. Visit our video library for more videos.)