Romney cites Scriptures on same-sex marriage

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is defending his opposition to same-sex marriage by citing the Scriptures.

The former Massachusetts governor, who in his 1994 Senate bid pledged to be a more effective champion for gay causes than his Democratic rival, discussed marriage equality in an interview set to air Sunday on CBS's 60 Minutes.

''This isn't just some temporary convenience here on Earth, but we're people that are designed to live together as male and female, and we're gonna have families,'' he tells interviewer Mike Wallace, according to an excerpt CBS released Friday. ''And that…there's a great line in the Bible that children are an inheritance of the Lord, and happy is he who has or hath his quiver full of them.''

Romney, seeking to become the first Mormon president, also tries to allay any concerns about his religion.

''What's at the heart of my faith is a belief that there's a creator, that we're all children of the same God, and that, fundamentally, the relationship you have with your spouse is important and eternal,'' Romney said over the course of two interviews, one of which was taped at his vacation home in Wolfeboro, N.H.

Meanwhile, Romney also is on the cover of the latest edition of Time magazine.

In its main story Time writes, ''The closest he has ever come to a personal religious crisis, he recalls, was when he was in college and considering whether to go off on a mission, as his grandfather, father, and brother had done.... He says he also felt guilty about the draft deferment he would get for it, when other young men his age were heading for Vietnam.''

Romney offered a slightly different tale during an interview with the Boston Herald during his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign.

''I didn't go on a mission to avoid the draft,'' Romney said at the time. ''I never asked my dad [Michigan governor George Romney] in any way to be involved with the draft board."

''Romney, however, acknowledged he did not have any desire to serve in the military during his college and missionary days, especially after he married and became a father,'' the newspaper wrote. '' 'I was not planning on signing up for the military,' he said. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft. If drafted, I would have been happy to serve, and if I didn't get drafted, I was happy to be with my wife and new child.' '' (Glen Johnson, AP)