EDGE Boston

Heading into the Florida primary this week, Republican candidates for the presidency have faced in this election cycle more questions about gay rights issues than ever before, and none of their answers should leave any LGBT proponents feeling comfortable.

Starting with the flap over dissing a gay veteran who challenged the candidates on their views of ’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ each candidate for the oval office has faced personal and professional questions about LGBT issues. All refuse to be advocates.

Indeed, in one of their first debates, when there were nine candidates, every would-be Republican nominee supported a continuation of the ban on gays serving in the military. In fact some candidates have actually suggested they would reinstate the ban if elected. This is particularly disheartening since a vast majority of American’s believed in the repeal with some polls showing close to 80 percent of American’s in favor. Even Marine Gen. James F. Amos, who was the only major military person to oppose the repeal, has since changed his mind and called the lifting of the ban a "non-event" and said, "I’m very pleased with how it has gone."

However, now that the ban has been officially lifted, which is on top of a judicial determination that DADT is unconstitutional, it no longer seems to be a pressing debate issue. Instead, the gay rights focus has been on same-sex marriage.

Indeed, one of the first debates in New Hampshire required each candidate to respond to a penetrating inquiry by Diane Sawyer, asking them to assume they were addressing a gay couple about same-sex marriage. Each candidate opposed the practice, now legally authorized in New Hampshire. As with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell this crop of Republicans are on the wrong side of history. Last year, for the first time, several polls showed that a majority of American’s believe same-sex marriage should be legal. However, some of these candidates not only don’t believe in marriage equality, but take it one step further, and say they’d support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage once and for all. So much for these so-called state’s rights or constitutional republicans. They only believe in state’s rights, or not tinkering with the constitutional, when it’s convenient for them.

Few questions at the debate were more pressing than the one posed to Rick Santorum, when he was asked how he would feel if one of his children were gay. The former Senator from Pennsylvania responded that he would love his child every bit as much as he did before the proclamation, noting that it was a parent’s duty to love a child unconditionally.

Unfortunately, this is the same Santorum, who back in 2003, likened gays to bestiality, causing a hundred students of one college graduating class to walk out on his commencement speech. While his campaign ads downplay his opposition to gays, they go out of their way to link Mitt Romney to Ted Kennedy, suggesting that Romney and Kennedy were liberal on social issues.

A trio of South Carolina evangelicals threw their support behind Rick Santorum last week with a provocative statement that praises him for putting his name to extreme positions regarding homosexuality, heterosexuality and marital fidelity. The statement also rebuked Romney for "homophilia" and suggested his Mormon faith is "heretical."

"Rick Santorum clearly sees homosexuality for what the Bible, Rome, Bob Jones University and even Salt Lake City have always regarded it, as a very serious form of sexual sin like adultery or incest," the Rev. Huey Mills, a Lancaster pastor and principal of a Christian school, said in a statement. "Romney’s position on homosexuality, on the other hand, is probably a bigger scandal to traditionalist Mormons than it is to those of us who’ve always seen Mormonism, with its interesting historic approaches to sexuality and polygamy, as pretty heretical. In obedience to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, most South Carolinians and I have a sane and healthy homophobia, while Mitt Romney has a very bad case of homophilia. The man very clearly endorses dangerous, unhealthy homosexual conduct."

Newt Gingrich has followed a similar tact regarding Romney, encouraging Florida voters not to support a ’Massachusetts Moderate.’ Gingrich had been campaigning that "the sacrament of marriage was based on a man and a woman; has been for 3,000 years, is at the core of our civilization, and must be protected." He insists it is not a "civil right" which gays can claim as something they are entitled to. Gingrich has also bitterly complained that the media has ignored anti-Christian bigotry in this country while pushing the gay rights agenda. In campaign stops, he touts that "John Adams, who wrote the Constitution, would be surprised to hear that people of the same sex should be able to marry."

Where was that sacrament of marriage -- Gingrich holds so dear -- when he cheated on his first wife, then married his mistress, then cheated on her and married that mistress? And now wife number 2 (mistress number 1) is alleging that Gingrich asked her if they could have an "open marriage" so he could continue his relationship with mistress number 2 (wife number 3). Yes it’s clear that Gingrich holds the institution of marriage in high regard.

Meanwhile, it was Santorum who got a boost from evangelical leaders when 150 of them, led by the hostile Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, met in Houston and endorsed him over Newt Gingrich. Faced with the reality that New Hampshire had decided in favor of marriage for same sex couples, and that 1,800 same-sex couples secured marriage licenses, the state’s rights advocate Santorum reversed course, stating that marriage is "unique," and must be a federal "constitutional" issue.

Romney himself, as far back as 1994, in an interview with the Boston gay newspaper, Bay Windows, suggested as much. But it is also Romney who went on the Larry King Show to decry the judicial activism and judges who legalized gay marriage in his state, claiming he thought it was an incorrect decision. Indeed, as with all the remaining presidential candidates, Romney has hailed his conservatism before the Conservative Political Action Caucus, insisting that marriage must remain a contract between ’"one man and one woman;" that courts should not be tinkering with history.

Winning the New Hampshire primary, Romney stood at the podium in a dark blue suits, each of his five sons standing behind him in a crisp buttoned down white shirt. What if one of his sons were gay, he was once asked too. "I would love them just as much."

Romney has also stated that he would not allow his faith as a Mormon interfere with his duties as a president, noting that in Massachusetts, as its governor, he appointed gays and lesbians to office. He boasted that while he would protect the kinds of benefits "we might associate with people who form civil unions," it would be "a mistake" for society to expand the definition of marriage to same sex couples.

In one of his last South Carolina debates, Romney found himself on the defensive, sharing that in his view he has always been against marriage for same-sex couples, in an attempt to tout his conservative principles. Ironically, Jon Huntsman, the now erased candidate, and former Governor of Utah, was the only Republican presidential candidate who had even expressed a modicum of support for civil unions. To his credit though as governor he stunned his state in 2009 when he announced his support for civil unions even though at the time 70 percent of Utahans opposed them.

The bottom line is that out of all the candidates that have a shot at the nomination on the Republican ticket, their position on LGBT issues is clear and defined.

None had ever called for the abolition of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy.

None has ever supported the definition of marriage as anything other than a union between a man and a woman. Some have even supported a federal constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.

None has ever embraced or endorsed the congressional bill calling for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in the workplace.

None has ever come out and said they have had a homosexual as part of their immediate family.

And none have claimed to ever been to Key West on New Year’s Eve to watch Sushi in her shoe drop.