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Haley Barbour, Anti-Gay Governor, Will Not Be A Candidate For President

“I will not be a candidate for president next year,” says Mississippi GOP Governor Haley Barbour, a former lobbyist and former chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Stating, ”A candidate for president today is embracing a 10-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else,” Barbour added, “His (or her) supporters expect and deserve no less than absolute fire in the belly from their candidate. I cannot offer that with certainty, and total certainty is required.”

What Haley Barbour is certain of, however, is his position on gay rights, such as marriage equality and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” While he sees working with gays as “no big deal to me,” Barbour is flat-out anti-same-sex marriage. Barbour “has long opposed gay marriage,” according to The Huffington Post, and Politico adds that “a Gallup poll found that Mississippi was the most conservative state in the nation,” noting that “a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters [in Mississippi, Barbour’s home state,] said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal.”

Additionally, Barbour told the American Family Association he would reinstate ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), stating soldiers don’t need any “amorous situation” in the theater of war.

Last year, Barbour faced criticism after “his praise of “Citizens’ Councils,” segregationist groups that resisted integration through economic and political pressure,” according to CBS News.