Romney campaign privately muzzled Richard Grenell to avoid confronting the homophobic right

Publicly, the Romney campaign says it it wanted foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell to stay on the campaign, but according to a new report from The New York Times, the campaign privately muzzled the openly gay staffer just days before his resignation, ordering him to stay silent during a campaign conference call on foreign policy with reporters that he had organized:

It turned out he was at home in Los Angeles, listening in, but stone silent and seething. A few minutes earlier, a senior Romney aide had delivered an unexpected directive, according to several people involved in the call.

'Ric,' said Alex Wong, a policy aide, 'the campaign has requested that you not speak on this call.' Mr. Wong added, 'It's best to lay low for now.'

The reason they'd asked him to stay silent?

'It's not that the campaign cared whether Ric Grenell was gay,' one Republican adviser said. 'They believed this was a nonissue. But they didn't want to confront the religious right.'

So Mitt Romney wasn't being a homophobic bully. It's just that his campaign was afraid to stand up to them.