His views on the LGBT community are clear — equality is not on Mitt Romney’s agenda. American Bridge compiled the record of homophobia that he can’t run from. It makes NOM and Family Research Council and the rest of the professional anti-gays proud.

Nathaniel Frank has a piece up at Huff Post that illustrates the quandry Mittens is in now that the President has “evolved” on marriage equality (to the extent you can call it that since he still holds the “states rights” position) — “Mitt Romney and the New Immorality.”

After Obama’s announcement, Mitt Romney suddenly seemed a figure from the dark ages, just how the Obama campaign has sought to cast him in its latest video, entitled, “Romney: Backwards on Equality.” And Romney has played right into their hands. Placing himself to the right even of George W. Bush on an issue around which attitudes have changed drastically just since his presidency, Romney reacted to Obama’s evolution by digging in his heels. He said that states are free to bar a gay man from entering a hospital to sit by the bed of his dying partner of 50 years. However disappointing Obama’s own states’-rights position remains, his reluctance was always about the word “marriage” and was never so extreme as to allow this sort of rank cruelty — the height of immorality.

Romney has even said he opposes civil unions “if they’re identical to marriage other than by name.” Ponder that point for a minute, and the way he expressed it, because it’s telling: Most opponents of same-sex marriage, including Romney, claim that they are not anti-gay and that they believe in the principle of equal treatment. That’s why civil unions have become the fallback position for many, because it seems to allow them to support equality while simply claiming an allegiance to the word “marriage.” (I don’t support this distinction, but at least it has a certain logic.) Yet here Romney admits that what matters to him is giving gay people fewer rights than straight people. Holding onto the “m” word is not enough for Romney types; they need to feel superior. Romney’s position can be based on no other principle than casting gay people as lesser.

…Romney reacted to Obama’s marriage announcement this week by saying what most mainstream politicians now say about marriage equality, that he believes marriage “is a relationship between a man and a woman, and that’s my own preference.” He offers no argument, no public policy rationale, no principle, simply an assertion of what he believes marriage currently is (not what it ought to be, and not why). Must we let this pass as acceptable public discourse?