Unless you live under a rock or in America, you’ve heard about this.

The Candidate Vow:
Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow* to do so through my:

* Personal fidelity to my spouse.

* Respect for the marital bonds of others.

* Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.

* Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.

* Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.

* Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”

* Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.

* Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.

* Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

* Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.

* Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.

* Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.

* Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA?s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.

* Fierce defense of the First Amendment?s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech22, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

That’s not very exciting. Any moron with a full set of Crayolas can write a pledge, but it takes a special kind of moron to write this and demand candidates for the Presidency of the United States sign it.

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.

Ed, brilliant propietor of Gin and Tacos, says it best:

I…see.

I’m still trying to find words for how completely I don’t. That’s what the psychopathic monsters writing pledges count on: that candidates will say anything to get elected and that people like me will be rendered speechless. So many people were rendered totally speechy and backlashy that the sponsoring organization (I’m not linking to those depraved motherfuckers) removed that paragraph about the relative merits of slavery on the African-American family. Michelle Bachmann signed that blood oath, then said she hadn’t read it. That’s…I don’t know.

I’m still speechless, but the words career-ending abomination spring effortlessly to mind.