Mitt Romney, Republican presidential
candidate, on Monday reiterated his opposition to gay marriage and
civil unions.
Romney made his remarks during a town
hall in Hopkinton, New Hampshire.
When a young woman asked Romney why he
believed that a gay marriage “is lesser than a marriage between man
and woman,” the candidate answered, “The ideal setting to raise a
child for a society like ours is when there's a man and woman in the
marriage.”
A second woman said that she was raised
by her mother and grandmother, then pressed Romney to explain why
that's not an ideal setting.
“There's a lot of folks that get
raised by one parent – through divorce, through death or through a
parent having a child out of wedlock, but in my view, a society
recognizes that the ideal setting for raising a child is when you
have two people working together and where one is male and one is
female,” Romney answered. “As a society we say, 'You know what,
we're going to call marriage what it has been called for 6,000 years
or longer: a relationship between one man and one woman.'”
When asked about civil unions, Romney
said he could only support a limited partnership which includes “such
things as hospital visitation rights and similar things” for gay
couples. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
Romney's comments come just days after
Bryan Fischer speaking to a group of social conservatives at the
Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. blamed gay marriage on
Romney, because it first occurred in Massachusetts while on his
watch.
“We have gay marriage in the United
States because of Mitt Romney,” Fischer said. “It was executive
activism.”
(Related: Mitt
Romney suggests activists to blame for his opposition to gay
marriage.)