Wrong: Gingrich Backer Claims Romney Performed Gay Weddings

Georgia state representative Judy Manning, who backs her state's former congressman Newt Gingrich for president, is "afraid" of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney's Mormonism -- and claims (wrongly) that Romney performed same-sex marriages.

"I think Mitt Romney is a nice man, but I'm afraid of his Mormon faith," Manning, a Republican, told The Marietta Daily Journal in an interview published this week. "It's better than a Muslim. Of course, every time you look at the TV these days you find an ad on there telling us how normal they are. So why do they have to put ads on the TV just to convince us that they're normal if they are normal? ... If the Mormon faith adhered to a past philosophy of pluralism, multi-wives, that doesn't follow the Christian faith of one man and one woman, and that concerns me."

She also said of Romney, "When he was the governor of Massachusetts he performed 100 -- and I'm not sure this number is right, but my mind says it's about 180 gay marriages -- and now, when he is running as president on the Republican ticket, he says that marriage is between a man and a woman."

The LGBT news site Project Q Atlanta points out, "Romney has always opposed same-sex marriage. In 2004, as governor of Massachusetts, he instructed town clerks to issue marriage license to gay couples following a state Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing them. He banned the issuing of licenses to out-of-state gay couples and in 2005, backed a state constitutional amendment that would have outlawed the unions."

Manning is from Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta, in the area Gingrich once represented in Congress. Marietta lies within Cobb County, which became infamous in 1993 when the County Board passed a resolution condemning "the life styles advocated by the gay community." Although Manning seems to take an interest in same-sex couples' personal lives, she told the Journal that many people are "too interested in the personal lives of all of our elected officials," apparently a reference to Gingrich's checkered marital history.