Gary Johnson, former NM Governor

A socially-conservative group based in Iowa has circulated a pledge among the candidates running for president in 2012 asking each candidate to promise to agree to a number of issues, including to “promise personal fidelity to my spouse,” as well as a host of other committments such as “a steadfast embrace” to the idea that marriage is between one man and one woman, and promoting safeguards for military personnel from “inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among atttracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.).”

Thus far, two Republican presidential candidates — Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum – have signed the pledge but on Saturday (July 9), former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson not only announced that he wouldn’t sign it but he called the petition from The Family Leader, based out of Pleasant Hill, Iowa, “offensive and un-Republican.”

Here’s the statement Johnson campaign released:

“Government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults. I have always been a strong advocate of liberty and freedom from unnecessary government intervention into our lives. The freedoms that our forefathers fought for in this country are sacred and must be preserved. The Republican Party cannot be sidetracked into discussing these morally judgmental issues — such a discussion is simply wrongheaded. We need to maintain our position as the party of efficient government management and the watchdogs of the “public’s pocket book”.

“This ‘pledge’ is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn’t fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue’.

While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn’t fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.

The Republican Party cannot afford to have a Presidential candidate who condones intolerance, bigotry and the denial of liberty to the citizens of this country. If we nominate such a candidate, we will never capture the White House in 2012. If candidates who sign this pledge somehow think they are scoring some points with some core constituency of the Republican Party, they are doing so at the peril of writing off the vast majority of Americans who want no part of this ‘pledge’ and its offensive language.

The Johnson campaign says the candidate will reiterate his remarks Saturday afternoon when he gives a speech in Las Vegas at the Conservative Leadership Conference. Earlier in the day, Johnson appeared on FOX News Channel and talked about not signing the pledge:

The pledge — which is the brainchild of Bob Vander Plaats, who supported Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign in 2008 as a state chairman — came under fire Saturday by liberal and civil rights groups for a passage in the petition that says, “Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

You can read The Family Leader pledge for yourself by clicking here.