Iowa GOP removes racist passage from presidential marriage pledge

Let's say you live in Iowa, the first state to hold a presidential caucus and therefore a political barometer (sorta) for the upcoming presidential race. Let's say you are also a hardcore conservative, and you want to make sure that the Republican who gets your support shares your views about, say, how "traditional" monogamous marriage between one man and one woman forms the basis of everything we know about human rights. What on earth do you do? Well, you tell all the GOP candidates that they need to sign a pledge called "The Marriage Vow," which outlines your beliefs, of course. Oh, but you might want to take out this super-racist bit first:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

Um. You have got to be joking with me here, people. The whole document offends me for a lot of reasons — it claims homosexuality is not an innate trait (wrong) and that "non-commital [sic] co-habitation" is debasing marriage (also wrong) — but that section is, like, old-school racist. African-American babies were definitely more likely to be raised by his or her mother and father... until these families were split up and sold to other people because they were treated as fucking property. Thankfully, the Iowa group has removed this section from "The Marriage Vow" — after Michele Bachmann signed it and Rick Santorum committed to it, mind you — claiming it might be "misconstrued." But including it in the first place? In 2011? Basically unconscionable.