Republican outgoing Gov. Mitt Romney got himself elected in Blue State Massachusetts by portraying himself as a liberal Republican. Now that he’s running for president, he has done a complete reversal, trying to make his name synonymous with “homophobe.”

It’s one thing to be a homophobe out of ignorance. It’s another to be a homophobe for political gain. In 2006, the former is inexcusable while the latter is despicable.

Anyone thinking of supporting Romney’s bid for president because of his socially conservative views on gay people should know a few things about the governor. When Romney ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate in 1994, he wrote a letter to the Mass Log Cabin Club in which he pledged: “[A]s we seek to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.” During the same campaign, when he was accused of having once described gay people as “perverse” during a religious meeting of Mormons, Romney’s campaign issued a forceful statement decrying the accusation as false and reiterating that Romney respected “all people regardless of their race, creed, or sexual orientation.”

During his 2001 run for governor, his campaign distributed bright pink flyers at the June Pride parade declaring “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend!” During his inaugural speech, he said it was important to defend civil rights “regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or race.” He appointed eight openly gay and lesbian people to high profile positions in his administration. And before he decided to run for president — that is to say, before he needed to establish some strong anti-gay bonafides — Romney doubled the budget line item for the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. This would be the same commission, mind you, that Romney tried to disband in highly public fashion last May.

Is Mitt Romney a homophobe? I have no idea. It’s hard to say that he isn’t when he appears on a stage, as he did this past Sunday, with Roberto Miranda, who once compared the marriages of same-sex couples with the terrorist attacks of September 11. With Romney just several feet away from him, Miranda angrily warned the crowd that gay activists were “aggressive, invasive, politically sophisticated and powerful” and that they sought to impose the “homosexual agenda in our schools, our workplaces, the social service sector and eventually our homes and even our churches.”

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether Romney is a bigot. Because he’s an opportunist who’s more than happy to take advantage of the bigotry of others. It’s been obvious for quite some time now that he’s been using the marriage equality side for political gain. But everyone in the VoteOnMarriage.org coalition should know that he’s using them, too.

This is beyond ridiculous. I know the folks who make up the hard core Republican base are slow but are they really so dimwitted they can’t tell when they are being pandered to?

And don’t evangelicals think Mormons are a cult?