[Our man in washington]

"I am a gay woman and I have children. Your comment that you just made, it sort of invalidates my family," said Cynthia Fish, a mother of a 6- and 8-year-old. "... I wish you could explain to me more, why if we are sending our troops over to fight for liberty and justice for all throughout this country, why not for me? Why not for my family?"

In this situation, do we actually expect candidates to reply with "Oh, my goodness, did you say you were gay? Well, shame on you! That's just disgusting! And you shouldn't be raising kids either!"

Newsflash: candidates (except for the very marginal) do not call people with questions sinners. Let's get away from this "gotcha" game of trying to read a great deal into every stray utterance of every candidate.

And for those of you saying "Romney is toast", could we have a moratorium on calling candidates "toast" unless something on a huge scale happens? We've had threads where people have said Giuliani is toast because he said this and McCain is toast because he said that. If I combined all the "toast" postings, I could only conclude that no one will win the Republican nomination. Most of the nation just isn't paying attention to the race yet.

Full disclosure: Romney isn't my first choice either.

[JRochelle]

You are right about the toast thing.

I haven’t used it yet so I’ll do that now.

Ron Paul is toast.

:)

[L.N. Smithee]

In this situation, do we actually expect candidates to reply with "Oh, my goodness, did you say you were gay? Well, shame on you! That's just disgusting! And you shouldn't be raising kids either!"

Newsflash: candidates (except for the very marginal) do not call people with questions sinners. Let's get away from this "gotcha" game of trying to read a great deal into every stray utterance of every candidate.

Thanks for the sanity break.