We are living in two different Americas.

Last week Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney stayed stonily silent through a relentless and bigoted campaign that was waged against his only gay staff member by the hard right.

Isolated, and undefended by Romney's campaign, the staffer resigned. Richard Grenell, Romney's pick to be his campaign’s national security and foreign policy spokesman, said the nonstop drumbeat from social conservatives over his sexuality diminished his ability to do his job.

Romney has in the past indirectly criticized the 'poisonous language' of the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, the notorious hard right homophobe who made the loudest calls for Grenell's firing, but presidential candidate Romney quietly presented Fischer with Grenell's scalp without a word.

The take away is quite clear: we can vote for Romney, a GOP candidate who looks and acts like he was preserved in amber in 1950, kitted out with all the backward, prejudiced social and political outlooks of that faraway time - or we can acknowledge that we live in the 21 century and that Americans, all Americans, deserve the respect and rights that the U. S. Constitution affords us.

In stark contrast yesterday the Vice President of the United States Joe Biden made clear his belief that both heterosexual and gay couples should be treated equally by the law in the Unites States.

The decision makes itself, really. The GOP are marching in lockstep into the past.