Instead of a red-meat conservative policy speech, Romney discussed his own family and offered a defense of Christianity, saying that “there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.” Still, he was inclusive: “Men and women of every faith, and good people with none at all, sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life,” Romney said.

He had one sustained applause line in a 20-minute speech delivered days after President Barack Obama historically embraced gay marriage. “Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman,” Romney said to a cheering crowd of students who have to follow a strict code of conduct that considers sex out of wedlock and homosexuality to be sins.

On Saturday, Obama was not seeking to revisit the issue of gay marriage. In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president didn’t mention his history-making endorsement. Instead, he repeated his call for congressional lawmakers to take up a “to-do list” of tax breaks, mortgage relief and other initiatives that he insists will create jobs and help middle-class families struggling in the sluggish economy.

Having spent part of the week on the West Coast raising money for his re-election effort, Obama appeared in the Rose Garden of the White House to honor award-winning law enforcement officers.

It was Obama’s first joint appearance with Vice President Joe Biden after Biden, according to aides, apologized to the president for pushing gay marriage to the forefront of the presidential campaign and inadvertently pressuring Obama to declare his support for same-sex unions.

Obama and Biden were all smiles as they walked to the sun-splashed ceremony together. Introducing Obama, Biden credited the president’s commitment to law enforcement and the two quickly embraced before Obama spoke.

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell founded Liberty University in 1971 to be for evangelical Christians “what Notre Dame is to young Catholics and Brigham Young is to young Mormons,” as his son, University Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr., said on commencement day. It’s become a destination for Republican politicians looking to speak to the religious right, and Romney’s campaign team — planning the speech long before gay marriage became a central issue — viewed it as an opportunity to address the kind of socially conservative audience that had been wary of him during the prolonged GOP primary fight.

For Romney, the challenge is twofold. His past policy positions, including support for abortion rights, don’t sit well. But his personal faith is also an issue because many evangelicals don’t consider Mormons to be fellow Christians. Evangelicals are a critical segment of the GOP base; many of those voters backed his GOP rivals in the prolonged primary.

When he locks in the Republican presidential nomination, Romney will make history as the first Mormon nominee from a major party. His faith is central to him and to his family — he spent two years in France as a missionary, a time when he lived in occasionally primitive conditions. When he returned home, he attended Brigham Young University, a Mormon school, and married his wife, Ann, who had converted to Mormonism. As they built a life in Boston, Romney took on a significant leadership role in the church, serving as a lay pastor, fighting to build a temple in town and counseling families in need.

But he’s mostly avoided talking about it on the campaign trail, largely avoiding religious forums and events throughout the primary season.

And at arguably the most religious venue he’s addressed during the campaign — since announcing his bid, Romney hasn’t made a public appearance in a church of any kind — he continued to keep his own faith in the background.

“This isn’t a speech about Mormonism,” senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told reporters Friday on a conference call. Fehrnstrom pointed to the speech Romney gave in Texas in 2007 outlining his faith and defending religious freedom — the last time the former Massachusetts governor has addressed his faith in any detail.

Still, it was clear the campaign was keenly aware of the overtones. Romney was introduced by Mark DeMoss, an evangelical who has repeatedly defended Romney’s faith on the campaign trail. “I suspect I won’t agree with Mitt Romney on everything, but I will tell you this: I trust him. I trust him to do the right thing,” said DeMoss, who went on with a lengthy testament to Romney’s values.

Despite the concern, surveys have shown for months now that whatever reservations Republican evangelicals have about Romney’s faith, they are likely to back him in a general election.

A spokesman for Liberty said that Romney is not the first Mormon to speak at a university commencement. “This is our 39th commencement speaker, and 21 of those 39 speakers would not necessarily meet Liberty’s doctrinal theological statement,” said the spokesman, Johnnie Moore, explaining that anyone who teaches at the university is held to that doctrinal standard.

Romney’s selection as commencement speaker was an issue for some students who graduated from Liberty this weekend. When the school announced Romney as commencement speaker, hundreds of angry comments were posted on Liberty’s Facebook page by people who said they were students or alumni, objecting to giving a Mormon a platform. The school responded by affirming its welcome to Romney.

“There was some concern in my family, yes,” because of Romney’s Mormonism, said Robert Maginnis, a retired Army colonel whose nephew is a member of the 2012 class.

Ahead of Romney’s remarks, University Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said the school’s invitation to him should not be considered an endorsement. He noted that his father, the school’s founder, said that Christians should vote for the candidate who shares their political positions “not the candidate that shares his or her faith or theology.”

___

Zoll reported from New York. Associated Press writer Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.

“America needs your talent and your energy, all the more now that our country’s in a tough spot,” Romney says in remarks prepared for Liberty’s commencement. “In the most practical, everyday terms, the best cultural assets are values as basic as personal responsibility, the dignity of hard work and, above all, the commitments of family.”

Romney will urge the graduates to cherish their families, saying he “never once regretted missing any experience or opportunity in business” to be with his wife and five sons.

Although now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Romney had planned months ago to speak at the Liberty campus. It’s an opportunity to address to the kind of socially conservative audience that had been wary of him during the prolonged GOP primary fight. Republican Sen. John McCain spoke at Liberty in 2006 in advance of his presidential bid as he worked to calm concerns about his candidacy among evangelical conservatives.

Romney was taking the podium after a weeklong debate over gay marriage, punctuated by Democratic President Barack Obama’s embrace of same-sex marriage. The former Massachusetts governor has emphasized that he believes marriage is between one man and one woman, a position he’s long held.

Having spent part of the week on the West Coast raising money for his re-election effort, Obama was due back in the Rose Garden of the White House on Saturday to honor award-winning law enforcement officers. He had no other public events scheduled for the day.

Romney’s campaign confronted an issue related to gay marriage earlier this month when an openly gay spokesman, Richard Grenell, resigned from the campaign after conservatives attacked his support for same-sex marriage. Grenell had been a spokesman for John Bolton when he was U.N. ambassador during the Bush administration.

When the Boston Globe asked about the hiring of Grenell by the Romney campaign, Mathew Staver, the dean of Liberty University’s law school, responded: “That’s like throwing salt into a wound, and that’s the absolute wrong decision if he wants to reach out to the conservative base and unite them.”

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney championed a state constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage. He says he supports a federal constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage.

Still, Romney has a history of supporting certain gay rights. He is in favor of allowing states to give same-sex couples certain domestic partnership benefits, including adoption.

Romney’s views on gay marriage and other social issues are shaped by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormon doctrine defines marriage as between a man and a woman and considers sexual activity outside of marriage a sin. Mormon officials contributed money and volunteers for Proposition 8, the 2008 California measure that barred same-sex marriage. Romney’s political action committee contributed $10,000 to the National Organization for Marriage, the group that led the fight for that law.

However, Mormon officials have also backed measures that protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing and employment, including supporting such ordinances in 2009 for Salt Lake City, where the church is based.

In 2010, gay advocates protested after a high-ranking church leader said in a sermon that same-sex relationships are unnatural and can be overcome. In response, the church issued an official statement affirming its doctrine on traditional marriage but also condemning discrimination and violence against gays or any group.

___

AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll contributed to this report.

Romney also will tell the graduates to cherish time with their families, saying he “never once regretted missing any experience or opportunity in business” to be with his wife and five sons. “Regrets usually come the other way around, from missing moments with your children that don’t come again,” the wealthy former businessman said.

Romney’s campaign released excerpts of his speech a day early. His remarks will be delivered a few days after he reaffirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage after President Barack Obama’s historic embrace of gay marriage. The former Massachusetts governor also spent Thursday shrugging off a news report that he had bullied a gay classmate in prep school.

On Friday, Romney will try to shift the discussion back to jobs and the economy during an appearance in North Carolina, where voters this week approved a constitutional ban on same-sex unions.

While raising money Thursday in Kansas City, Mo., Romney all but ignored the discussion of gays and lesbians prompted by Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage. The renewed attention on gay rights came as Obama thrust the issue into the forefront by becoming the first president to support allowing gay couples to wed, shifting the campaign debate to social issues, where Romney faces skepticism among the Republican base.

“This is a time when we can follow this president down a road of decline and weakness or we can take a course that is based on a positive dynamic and a bold vision for this country,” he said.

During a fundraiser and public appearance earlier Thursday in Omaha, Neb., Romney hammered his vision for economic greatness, telling supporters “this could be the beginning of an extraordinary century for America.”

Obama’s unexpected embrace of gay marriage continued to overwhelm the presidential campaign as liberals and conservatives debated the political merits of his endorsement of an issue over which a president has little practical impact.

For Romney, the discussion of gay rights turned personal when The Washington Post published a story recounting how he and several schoolmates held down classmate John Lauber and cut off his bleached blond hair after seeking him out in his dorm room at their boarding school in the wealthy Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

The Post said Lauber was “perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality” and that he screamed for help as Romney held him down and forcibly hacked off his hair. The paper recounted another incident in which Romney shouted “atta girl” to a different student at the all-boys’ school who, years later, came out as gay.

At no point on Thursday did Romney volunteer comments about the report or about Obama’s views on gay rights. But he did apologize for what he characterized as tomfoolery when asked by reporters.

“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some may have gone too far. And for that I apologize,” Romney told Fox News during a hastily arranged radio interview.

Romney said he didn’t remember the Lauber incident, but also didn’t dispute that it happened. He stressed that he didn’t know either student was gay and moved quickly to counter any suggestion he had targeted students because they were.

“That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case,” he said, adding that the students involved “didn’t come out of the closet until years later.”

In a second interview Thursday, Romney laid out what he said was his long-held position on gay rights: While opposed to gay marriage, he said states should be allowed to grant various domestic partnership rights to same-sex couples, including the right to adopt children.

“States could have their own decisions with regards to the domestic partnership rights,” Romney told Fox News in his second interview of the day with the network. “But my preference would be to have a national standard for marriage and that marriage would be defined as being between a man and a woman.”

He said he would go as far as supporting gay couples who want to adopt children. “If two people of the same gender want to live together, want to have a loving relationship and even want to adopt a child — in my state, individuals of the same sex are able to adopt children — in my view, that’s something which people have the right to do.”

Romney’s advisers signaled they planned to campaign on the issue but acknowledged they would have to tread carefully. “I think it’s important to be respectful in how we talk about our differences, but the fact is that’s a significant difference in November,” Ed Gillespie, a senior Romney adviser, said Thursday on MSNBC.

___

Hunt reported from Washington.