At his commencement speech to Liberty University graduates, Mitt Romney received a polite but restrained welcome. But he did deliver one line that he and his advisers undoubtedly knew was guaranteed to the loud applause, especially in light of Obama’s announcement last week:
He had one sustained applause line in a 20-minute speech delivered days after President Barack Obama historically embraced gay marriage. “Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman,” Romney said to a cheering crowd of students who have to follow a strict code of conduct that considers sex out of wedlock and homosexuality to be sins.
Another irony meter bites the dust. Remember that Romney believes — he must, as a Mormon — that God explicitly commanded polygamy. And then, conveniently, commanded that it be ended. But when God supposedly gave that second command, in 1890, Romney’s own ancestors fled the United States and went to Mexico so they could keep doing it, in Mexico. So apparently they still believed in polygamy and denied that God wanted it to end.
20 comments
1 ping
Skip to comment form ↓
Ophelia Benson
May 15, 2012 at 1:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s ok – he muttered ‘or two or four or nine or so’ very fast under his breath in between ‘one’ and ‘woman.’
StevoR
May 15, 2012 at 1:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Etch-a-sketch.
Erase that dog on the hot car roof.
Erase that Mormon cult reference
And everything inconvenient.
We’re always been at war with EastAsia.
[Waits five minutes..]
We’ve always been at war with South Asia.
Truth is lies.
Rmoney was always the Real True* conservative.
(“Stinkyfroth” Santorum, Caine, Perry, Bachmann, who were they?*)
Don’t look back.
What he said today is what he really is.
* break **
(What he’ll say tomorrow
Will be a concession speech.
I hope.)
+++++
* Such a joy to say!
slc1
May 15, 2012 at 1:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And will the lamestream media point this out? Ho, ho, ho, and need I say ha, ha, ha.
juice
May 15, 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s ok. The people to whom he was pandering also believe that “definition of marriage” even though there is nothing in the Bible suggesting that God commands that marriage to be any such arrangement.
Marcus Ranum
May 15, 2012 at 1:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
God changes his mind! What if god changes his mind about dogs and cats getting married? Or gays? Or black people being evil? Romney ought to be comfortable with that, he changes his mind a fair bit, too – in that sense Romney is godlike.
Reginald Selkirk
May 15, 2012 at 1:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You’ve got to wonder what “faith of our fathers” means to a Mormon like Romney.
naturalcynic
May 15, 2012 at 1:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The LDS still have its doctrine that polygyny may still happen in heaven following death or divorce of a first [or second...] wife.
And to Mittens and polygamy, he said in an interview that he couldn’t think of anything more awful and abhorrent. I suppose that only means now, not in the past.
The Lorax
May 15, 2012 at 2:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is hardly a surprise. He isn’t going to get much support by waving around his Mormon credentials, now is he? Pander, pander, pander.
Reginald Selkirk
May 15, 2012 at 2:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Isaiah 11:
[6] The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
[7] And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
[8] And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.
richardelguru
May 15, 2012 at 2:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.”
Ewwww!
Now that’s just downright perverted. And these people think gay and extramarital sex is a sin.
coryat
May 15, 2012 at 2:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Lorax #8:
Now he’s saying pandas can be involved? Truly the gay agenda is sickening!
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
May 15, 2012 at 3:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Romney’s views on polygamy are evolving.
Constantly. Much like his views on everything else.
KG
May 15, 2012 at 3:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve just been reading The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, which is partly a fictionalised biography of Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young’s wives who escaped, apostasised, and campaigned to end polygamy. Brigham Young died exhorting his followers never to abandon the practice – which they officially did less than 20 years after his death, although many of the leaders continued to practise it in secret and turn a blind eye to others doing the same. Both he and Joseph Smith repeatedly lied about their own and their followers’ polygyny in the early days. So Robomormon is indeed following long-established and revered Mormon traditions – of lying, hypocrisy, and etch-a-sketching.
billdaniels
May 15, 2012 at 4:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Plural Marriage was given up in exchange for statehood. The teaching was never rejected. It’s now a “suspended” doctrine. They still believe it but most of them don’t practice it. Some Mormons are waiting for the day that polygamy will be legalized and then they will start doing it again.
One of my distant cousins was one of Joseph Smith’s plural wives. She may have had a child with him, according to Fawn Brodie in her book “No Man Knows my History”. After Joe got shot she was married to Brigham Young.
KG
May 15, 2012 at 5:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So if you’re both right, Robomormon’s a heretic. Or are they officially allowed to lie about what they believe?
Aratina Cage
May 15, 2012 at 5:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Looks like the Book of Mormon actually condemns polygamy in several places whereas their Doctrine and Covenants scripture (a revelation of Joseph Smith) is where it was officially sanctioned.
cptdoom
May 15, 2012 at 5:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That is likely because Mr. Smith “discovered” the golden plates that allegedly contained the Book of Mormon as a relatively young man (don’t know the exact timeline) but only had his revelation about plural marriage when he was older and a hot, young maid showed up in his house. IIRC, he had a trusted associate alert his wife Emma to the new revelation and she was apparently not pleased about it. Interestingly, after Smith’s death, his wife and oldest son stayed in the midwest and created an alternative to the church Young was creating in SLC that did not embrace polygamy. Interestingly, it was/is never as popular as the SLC version.
Homo Straminus
May 15, 2012 at 7:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
naturalcynic@7: “And to Mittens and polygamy, he said in an interview that he couldn’t think of anything more awful and abhorrent. ”
You’re…exaggerating, right? Sure he didn’t say that?
Because, wow.
billdaniels
May 15, 2012 at 9:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think that the Book of Mormon is the only religious text to condemn polygamy.
Since LDS ministers are unpaid and not trained in theology, when one of their teachings is questioned, they can use the excuse that the teaching is merely the teaching of some individuals and not the church at large, even though the teaching may appear in one of their Standard Works.
Phillip IV
May 16, 2012 at 6:15 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And that would be the case for any value of x. The only distinction is that for x∈(Brigham Young, Liberty, Bob Jones), the reasons for the cool reception are the opposite as in all other cases.
about gold mining
May 16, 2012 at 11:12 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
about gold mining…
[...]Romney’s Complete Lack of Irony | Dispatches from the Culture Wars[...]…