Mitt Romney may not be running for president again, but there is one issue he’s still campaigning for – marriage. The former governor, who was criticized for not doing more to try to stop the Massachusetts Supreme Court from imposing same-sex “marriage” on his state, is not mincing words. With state amendments being attacked one-by-one in the era of Obama lawlessness, Romney is back in the spotlight, speaking up for the millions of Americans who feel like they’re losing their voice. The Republican nominee wasn’t willing to concede marriage then – and, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he showed he isn’t willing to now either.

“I think marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” Romney said. “And I think the ideal setting for raising a child is in a setting where there’s a father and mother.” Despite what the media wants people to believe, Republicans haven’t “lost” the gay marriage issue, he explained. “I think you stand for various principles, you communicate those to the American people, and they either support those or not. Sometimes if something is lost, while you move on to the next issue, you wish you had won that one but you move on. In this case, it continues to be an issue that people find relevant and important, something that is being considered in various states around the country.”

Like most Americans, he thinks it should be up to the states – not judges – to define marriage. “I do believe, by the way, that it’s best decided by the people rather than the courts,” Romney said. “When the courts step in and make a decision of this nature, they’re removing from the people something which they have the right to decide themselves.”

And unfortunately for the country, the judges who are stepping in to make this decision are so blinded by their own agendas that they don’t even know the founding documents they’re basing them on. In Virginia, where a federal court just stripped voters of an amendment they passed in 2006, Judge Arenda Wright Allen insisted that, “Our Constitution declares that ‘all men’ are created equal. Surely this means all of us.” It surely does – only it’s from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. The Constitution starts with “We the People,” something she would have done well to keep in mind before undermining the entire democratic process. It was a glaring error on top of an even bigger error – rejecting the last 200 years of legal precedent.

Like so many judges splashed across front-page marriage stories, Allen is confining her view of history and the law to the last six months. If every judicial precedent came down to this, the political opinion du jour, then every law would be fair game. And our legal system, which is already teetering on an activists’ edge, would be ruled by instability. That’s why we appreciate leaders like Mitt Romney, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Mike Lee, and others, who have spoken up and said, “enough!” Together, we can show tens of millions of Americans that they’re not only relevant, but part of a massive movement standing for marriage.

At Library, Conservatives Check out Jindal’s Priorities

Liberals may have driven some Republicans underground on core issues, but the governor of my home state, Governor Bobby Jindal wasn’t one of them. The popular head of the Pelican State put everything on the table last Thursday night in a speech at the Reagan Library.

Standing in the shadow of another leader who never shied away from truth, Gov. Jindal warned about the “silent war” facing America – a war he believes threatens the very fabric of our nation. “It is pursued with grim and relentless determination by a group of like-minded elites, determined to transform the country from a land sustained by faith into a land where faith is silenced, privatized, and circumscribed.”

Lashing out at the attacks on religious liberty, Jindal made it clear that an attack on our First Freedom is an attack on all freedom. Spanning “Duck Dynasty” to Governor Mitch Daniels’s infamous social issues truce, Jindal showed the kind of passionate conviction that conservatives have been yearning for. “In practical terms, a truce would only amount to those who value religious liberty laying down their arms. Our religious freedom was won over the course of centuries of persecution and blood, and we should not surrender them without a fight.”

After talking about the ObamaCare mandate and the assault on conscience, Jindal turned to marriage. “This is the next stage of the assault, and it is only beginning. Today, an overwhelming majority of those who belong to a religious denomination in America – that’s more than half the country – are members of organizations that affirm the traditional definition of marriage. All of those denominations will be targeted in large and small degrees in the coming years.”

At times fiery and other times contemplative, the speech was a breath of fresh air in a political world crowded by weak-willed people pleasers. It was a fitting place for such a principled display – there, surrounded by the reminders of Ronald Reagan’s greatness. To all who sat in the library, the words of the 40th President were an appropriate echo: “We’re living in a dramatic age. Throughout the world the machinery of the state is being used as never before against religious freedom. But at the same time, throughout the world new groups of believers keep springing up. Points of light flash out in the darkness, and God is honored once again. Perhaps this is the greatest irony…. The very pressure they apply seems to create the force, friction, and heat that allow deep belief to once again burst into flame.” May it be as he says, once again.

SPLC: Southern Poverty Lawless Center?

After years of denying their real agenda, the Southern Poverty Law Center is finally coming out of the closet to litigate their first-ever case on same-sex “marriage.” The so-called arbiters of tolerance announced last week that the organization is jumping into the marriage debate to challenge Alabama’s constitutional provision defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

SPLC, which for decades has denied their pro-homosexual bias, is shooting for the state’s marriage amendment, arguing that the law that defends man-woman unions “demeans” homosexuals. The organization, which was linked in federal court to the first act of domestic terrorism in D.C., continues to show its true colors as part of a coordinated effort to undermine marriage.

If there is a silver lining to the lawsuit, it’s that the American people will finally see SPLC for what it is: not neutral, not a third party, and certainly not a credible source of information. Who are they, funded by extreme homosexual activists, to label people who oppose their agenda as “hate groups?” While the media relies on SPLC as an independent mediator of great public debates, the reality is that they are no more qualified to umpire the national dialogue than the Human Rights Campaign.

On one hand, they use their $250 million in offshore accounts to advocate for homosexuality, and on the other, they try to stigmatize and marginalize the opposition with false labels that are repeated by the Department of Justice and the media. It’s like giving SPLC the chance to referee and play in the same game! After inspiring a shooting like the one at FRC, SPLC should have never been used by the media or the government as a legitimate source in the first place. Now, we can only hope that others will realize the seeds of bias were there all along.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.