Romney Free-Associates on Marriage

A reader writes:

I clicked on to the links you featured in your bit on Romney and France's supposed seven year marriage contracts. Like others, when I heard about the seven year marriage contracts, I immediately thought of the science fiction novels of Orson Scott Card. In Card's novels these temporary seven year marriage contracts are a major part of his fictious cultures.

What I didn't see mentioned anywhere is that Orson Scott Card (like Romney) is a Mormon - indeed, the most successful Mormon writer ever...

I studied playwriting under Card while a student at BYU in the early 80's. He explained how his novels were meant to be symbolic of Mormon theology, and that the seven year marriage contracts were inspired by the non-traditional marriage system that was central to Mormonism in the 19th century (aka, polygamy AND easy no-fault divorces.)

So Romney uses stories of fictional marriage contracts to prove that he believes in traditional marriage - but those stories were invented by a fellow Mormon who took as his inspiration the non-traditional marriage system embraced by Romney's great grandparents.