Republican outgoing Gov. Mitt Romney got himself elected in Blue State Massachusetts by portraying himself as a liberal Republican. Now that he’s running for president, he has done a complete reversal, trying to make his name synonymous with “homophobe.”

It’s one thing to be a homophobe out of ignorance. It’s another to be a homophobe for political gain. In 2006, the former is inexcusable while the latter is despicable.

Anyone thinking of supporting Romney’s bid for president because of his socially conservative views on gay people should know a few things about the governor. When Romney ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate in 1994, he wrote a letter to the Mass Log Cabin Club in which he pledged: “[A]s we seek to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.” During the same campaign, when he was accused of having once described gay people as “perverse” during a religious meeting of Mormons, Romney’s campaign issued a forceful statement decrying the accusation as false and reiterating that Romney respected “all people regardless of their race, creed, or sexual orientation.”

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