An Iowa-based conservative group that’s asking presidential candidates to sign their “Marriage Vow” has edited out part of the preamble to the vow, the part that said black children were better off living in slavery than they are today.
Last week, Chuck Hurley said he and the rest of the staff at “The Family Leader” had “backed up every assertion” in the document with footnotes and he openly discussed the part about slavery.
“My wife and I have been heavily involved in an African American church the last several years and have helped start an inner-city school in Des Moines,” Hurley said. “And we have seen first-hand the devastation of fatherlessness.”
Hurley, who is white, acknowledged it was a sensitive topic.
“While slavery was a horrific institution and had a disastrous impact on African American families, sadly — statistically — a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than is an African American baby born today,” Hurley said last Thursday.
This past weekend a spokeswoman for The Family Leader sent a news release to national media outlets, saying the group has taken the references to slavery out of the preamble to “The Marriage Vow” because it could be “misconstrued.” Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has already signed the pledge and Rick Santorum has said he will, too.
Newt Gingrich is in Pella this afternoon as this month’s featured speaker in The Family Leader’s “presidential lecture series.”