Anti-Gay Attacks Force Romney Foreign Policy Expert to Resign

This post has been updated. See below.

It is not a good time to be both gay and conservative. In fact, several forces within the conservative movement are aggressively pushing to make being gay a disqualifier for being conservative.

And now they can chalk up another victory. Richard Grenell, who was hired a scant few months ago as the Romney campaign's spokesperson on foreign policy, resigned from the campaign today after several anti-gay conservative commentators complained about his working for the campaign. From Matthew Franck at National Review:

It seems pretty plain that, whatever fine record he compiled in the Bush administration, Grenell is more passionate about same-sex marriage than anything else. So here’s a thought experiment. Suppose Barack Obama comes out — as Grenell wishes he would — in favor of same-sex marriage in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. How fast and how publicly will Richard Grenell decamp from Romney to Obama?

Franck and his fellows can rest easy. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post has obtained Grenell's statement about his departure. It is reproduced below:

I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

Fortunately, this appears to be a personal decision on Grenell's part, rather than a purge by the Romney campaign. In fact, Grenell reportedly resigned in spite of being all but begged by the Romney campaign not to.

UPDATE: Noah Kristula-Green at the Daily Beast is questioning how much of this resignation was motivated by fear of anti-gay animus, and how much was motivated by a clash of personalities between Grenell and the Romney campaign. Read his aggregation of the various Tweets and takes here.