Mitt on Hugh Hewitt Monday 3/13

Mitt Romney was interview on the Hugh Hewitt show Monday evening. I was lucky enough to turn on Hugh's show when I was grabbing a bite to eat. Radioblogger has the entire transript here.

Issues discussed: SRLC Straw Poll results, Catholic adoption charities and gay parents.

Romney impressed me with his responses on the situation involving Catholic charities and gay parents. For those of you unaware, Catholic charities have been placing the hardest to place children in foster parent homes for years. Now that homosexual marriage has been legalized in Massachusetts, the state is requiring the Catholic charities to place children in homosexual couple households. This of course, is against the Catholic religion.

Governor Romney noted that children are the ones being hurt by telling the Catholic charities what they can and cannot believe. Mitt said he will be introducing a narrow resolution exempting the Catholic agencies from placing children in homosexual households. He said he can exempt them, b/c homosexual marriage is a statute, and not in the Consitution. Thus it is not unconstitutional to propose the bill he will later introduce.

Mitt seemed to recognize the importance of respecting religions and their beliefs.
Here are a couple key quotes from the interview. [courtesy Radioblogger]

MR: ...So you know, I'm of the belief that we have to do everything we
can to allow the Catholic Church to practice its religion as it wants to, and
not impose on them the direction that they have to place children into gay
couples.

MR: Well, we talked about this, this feature, and I expressed to him my concern that you know, as a society, we're very quick to jump when a Church or a religion in any way seems to be imposing in the public sector. If there's a Nativity scene, the ACLU is right there to keep that from happening. On the other hand, when the state intrudes on the right of a religion to practice its faith as they feel appropriate, somehow, no one comes to their aid.

HH: Now Mitt Romney, they will also argue that this will be an unlawful and unconstitutional establishment of religion, violative of the 1st Amendment. Your response?
MR: Well, this doesn't establish religion. It does just the opposite. It allows the free practice of religion. What we're looking to do is to say that a religion should be able to abide by its tenets, and its beliefs, and not have imposed upon it a statute that came before them by the legislature. This is not part of our Constitution.