Is richard grenell gay

Richard Grenellan openly gay foreign policy spokesman for the Romney campaign, resigned from his recently-appointed post on Tuesday, ABC News has confirmed. We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill," Matt Rhoades, the Romney campaign manager, told ABC News.

Grenell's resignation was first reported is richard grenell gay the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin. 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. Rubin reported that Grenell, who is openly gay, made his decision "after being kept under wraps" at a time when national security issues had risen to the forefront of the campaign and after activists on the right raised questions about his sexual orientation.

But, in an interview with ABC News, a source familiar with Grenell's departure from the Romney campaign disputed the "under wraps" suggestion. This source said Grenell, whose hiring was first reported on April 19, had not yet started his duties as the campaign's top national security spokesman and was in the process of moving from Los Angeles to Boston.

Among those who called Grenell in recent days to try to persuade him not to quit: his former boss and former U. The Romney campaign hired Grenell, who served as communications director at the United Nations under President Bush and worked as a spokesman for a number of prominent Republicans including George Pataki and Dave Camp, in mid April.

Shortly after the news of his hiring broke, Grenell was criticized not for his sexual orientation but for critical remarks he'd made on Twitter about Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista, Democratic women and the media. He later scrubbed the posts from his Twitter account.

But some social conservatives took issue with the Romney campaign's hiring of an openly homosexual man. In late April, a radio host for the American Family Association said that the hiring indicated the Romney campaign's willingness to tell the so-called pro-family community to "drop dead.

Richard Grenell now highest-ranking openly gay official in US government history

Democrats, including a member of the Obama campaign team, immediately pounced on the incident as an example of the Romney campaign caving to anti-gay forces on the right. Burton pronounced it a sign that Romney would be and the "beck and call" of whichever individuals or groups he needs to win in November.