Perry Bacon, Jr. The Washington Post, May 6, 2007
VIRGINIA BEACH, May 5 — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) did not discuss his Mormon faith as he continued his outreach Saturday to conservative Christians in a graduation speech at Regent University, the school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.
Instead, Romney, who is intensely courting this key segment of the Republican base in hopes of winning the party’s 2008 presidential nomination, expounded on conservative themes such as the importance of child-rearing and marriage and the presence of evil in the world.
“There is no work more important to America’s future than the work that is done within the four walls of the American home,” Romney said. He also criticized people who choose not to get married because they enjoy the single life.
“It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking,” Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. “In France, for instance, I’m told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past.”
And he twice referred to the Virginia Tech shootings on April 16 in which a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself.
“We’re shocked by the evil of the Virginia Tech shooting,” Romney said. “I opened my Bible shortly after I heard of the tragedy. Only a few verses, it seems, after the Fall, we read that Adam and Eve’s oldest son killed his younger brother. From the beginning, there has been evil in the world.”
He added: “Pornography and violence poison our music and movies and TV and video games. The Virginia Tech shooter, like the Columbine shooters before him, had drunk from this cesspool.”
Robertson, who has not endorsed any of the 2008 presidential candidates, called Romney an “outstanding American.”