Brad Pitt’s Mom Writes Anti-Obama Screed to Local Newspaper

Another example of why family and politics don't mix.

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Gregg DeGuire / FilmMagic

Brad Pitt arrives at the 84th Annual Academy Awards with his mother Jane and partner Angelina Jolie

It looks like Doug Pitt isn’t the only member of Brad’s family getting some extra press this week. On Tuesday, an anti-Obama letter signed by Jane Pitt, the mother of the Hollywood star, appeared in the pages of the Springfield, Missouri News Reader in response to an article about Christians reluctant to vote for Mitt Romney as President.

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The letter reads, in part:

Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.

The News-Leader later cleared up any confusion of the identity of the author by confirming the letter writer as “the mother of actor Brad Pitt and local businessman Doug Pitt.”

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Her stance could not be further from that of her son, who is one of Hollywood’s most vocal supporters of same-sex marriage. In 2008 Pitt donated $100,000 to help fight Proposition 8, the ballot proposition to repeal same-sex marriage in California. At the time, it was the largest donation to the campaign from an A-List celebrity.

He explained to the Los Angles Times that, “no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn’t harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8.”

Pitt and actress Angelina Jolie, his partner of seven years, with whom he has six children, had also famously vowed not to marry each other until same-sex couples also shared that right. (The couple announced their engagement in April, however, and although they have yet to set a date, Pitt told The Hollywood Reporter that he didn’t “think we’ll be able to hold out” until gay marriage is universal.)

Pitt is also a big fan of the president — even more so than his fiancée. At the premiere of her film The Land of Milk and Honey at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., Jolie said of the current administration, “there are many, many things that have gone in a wonderful direction and there are a few things I’m disappointed in.” When asked if he was an Obama supporter at the same premiere, Pitt answered, “I have been and remain so.”

Interestingly, Pitt shares more than a political affinity with the President; they also share an ancestor, Edwin Hickman, making them ninth cousins.

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