Romney no friend of gay, lesbian Americans
Barb ShellyMarc Solomon grew up in Kansas City and currently is national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, which advocates for the right of same-sex couples to enjoy the same matrimonial rights as heterosexual couples.
Solomon was executive director of MassEquality from 2005 to 2008, and his work overlapped the later part of Mitt Romney’s term as governor. Distressed that the Log Cabin Republicans offered a “qualified endorsement” for Romney as president, Solomon wrote a piece that has appeared in The Huffington Post and elsewhere.
Romney, he said, was anything but friendly to gay and lesbian citizens of Massachusetts. He consistently criticized the court decision which permitted gay marriage in the state. He tried to shut down the “Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth,” established a decade ago to address suicides by gay teenagers.
He fought the state Registry of Vital Records about a plan to prepare birth certificates designating “second parent” rather than mother or father on the birth certificates of children born to same-sex couples. Romney required his chief counsel to personally review the births of children born to same-sex parents, and only then could hospitals scratch out father or mother and write in “same-sex parent” — thereby assuring that these children begin life with a different documentation than others.
“I’m sad to say that Romney is someone whose track record is one of turning to LGBT people as an easy point of attack when the going gets tough, in order to burnish his socially conservative credentials, and someone whose personal interactions betray no genuine empathy for gay people, gay families or gay youth, not even when he has taken an oath (and made political promises) to stand up for them,” Solomon says in his piece.
I don’t know Solomon, and perhaps these are the words of an overly frustrated advocate. But others from Massachusetts have spoken and written about Romney’s lack of empathy for gay, lesbian and transsexual citizens. And there is the disturbing incident in which, as a prep school student, Romney led a posse of boys which tackled a student who was believed to be homosexual. Romney clipped his bleached blond hair while the other boy screamed and cried.
In seeking to win the Republican nomination, Romney has always said he opposes same-sex marriage. Unlike many of his positions, this one seems genuine. There is no reason to think his administration would be friendly to gay and lesbian Americans. Romney’s history toward them is more of contempt than empathy.
Brandon Lewis
6 months, 2 weeks agoOne of many reasons not to vote for Romney. Pick your poison.
Glen Enloe
6 months, 2 weeks agoWringing our hands about which candidate is or is not gay friendly is not the way to choose a president. We need to quit dividing. I’m afraid this article says more about the writer than Romney.
Steve Alleman
Kansas City
6 months, 2 weeks agoI agree that we need to quit dividing. You could start by granting all Americans equal protection under the law and full civil rights. Get back to us when you’re ready to stop dividing the country into first- and second-class citizens.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 2 weeks agoIn law marriage is a legal binding. In religion it is spiritual. Too many confuse the two. If your religion feels that they do not want to sanction gay marriage then by all means, don’t but it has nothing to do with the civil marriage that the state creates. Romney and most Republicans don’t/won’t acknowledge the distinction; they can’t separate the two. For gays & lesbians only one candidate recognizes their full citizenship.