Homosexuals beware..
A revolting title, but apt when one considers Romney's actions while Governor.
Murray Waas, of the Boston Globe, did some digging and what he found was, well, to put it mildly, astoundingly repulsive.
Stemming back to 2003, when gay marriage was legalised in Massachusetts, an order was also made to adjust the birth certificates of children born to homosexual couples, which would have the "father" be replaced with "father/other parent" to prevent discrimination and issues for homosexual couples who have children. However, Romney did not agree with this order and refused to comply, because as Waas points out, its "proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional family structures".
So Romney took a different tack, one which was directly advised against by the Department of Public Health lawyer because of the issues that could arise for those children born of homosexual parents, not to mention that it would stigmatise them as being somewhat different or abnormal. His proposal?
He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink.
Divisions between the governor’s office and state bureaucrats over the language on the forms and details about the extraordinary effort by the Republican governor to prevent routine recording of births to gay parents are contained in state records obtained by the Globe this month.
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Crossouts and handwritten alterations constituted “violations of existing statutes’’ and harmed “the integrity of the vital record-keeping system,’’ the deputy general counsel of the department, Peggy Wiesenberg, warned in a confidential Dec. 13, 2004, memo to Mark Nielsen, Romney’s general counsel.
The changes also would impair law enforcement and security efforts in a post-9/11 world, she said, and children with altered certificates would be likely to “encounter [difficulties] later in life . . . as they try to register for school, or apply for a passport or a driver’s license, or enlist in the military, or register to vote.”
Think about it for a moment.
Romney demanded that children born of homosexual couples have their birth certificates altered by hand, after getting permission from Romney's office - which would physically cross out the word father and write in, by hand, the word "second parent".
And that would be the child's birth certificate. Stigma anyone?
And this is just for homosexual women in a same sex
marriage. Homosexual males had to go even further than that..
Gay men seeking parental rights were required to take a different route, by obtaining a court order. By law, birth certificates must be issued within 10 days of birth, and in some instances, those deadlines were not met.
I emphasised "marriage" above because in one instance, Romney's office rejected an application to change the word "father" to "other parent" because the couple were not married. And in another, the application was denied because the couple had requested the word "wife" be placed on the certificate instead of "other parent".
In one instance, in which a couple asked that the handwritten alteration for the second parent say “wife” instead of second parent, the request was denied. In another, Leske refused to allow a birth certificate to be issued listing a same-sex couple as the parents because they were not married.
It is unfathomable to me that this actually occurred during his tenure as Governor. And he deemed this acceptable. But it only served to show is true feelings towards homosexuals in general.
In 2005, the state’s association of town clerks garnered some attention when it complained publicly about the absence of updated forms, calling handwritten changes inappropriate.
At that time, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said that the Registry of Vital Records had not changed the birth certificate form because such a change required an act of the state Legislature.
That assertion was contradicted by Wiesenberg, the Department of Public Health lawyer, who told Romney’s lawyers the previous year that authority to make the changes rested with the Department of Public Health.
The paper trail suggests other factors were at work beyond a lack of legislative action, and Romney’s public statements left no doubt that he was opposed to marriage and parenting by same-sex couples.
After presenting their proposal for revised forms to Romney’s chief of staff Beth Myers in May 2004, Department of Public Health officials were told by a Romney staff lawyer via e-mail that “there appear to be many complicated issues that should be discussed with many different communities before the changes are made.’’
The next month, Romney delivered remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington in which he decried the state Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling and its effect on child-rearing. He outlined his misgivings about the request from the Registry of Vital Records.
“The children of America have the right to have a father and a mother,’’ Romney said in his prepared remarks. “What should be the ideal for raising a child? Not a village, not ‘parent A’ and ‘parent B,’ but a mother and a father.’’
Romney also warned about the societal impact of gay parents raising children. “Scientific studies of children raised by same-sex couples are almost nonexistent,’’ he said. “It may affect the development of children and thereby future society as a whole.’’
So stigmatising them is a better solution?
Right..
And yes, his attitudes gets worse. As
Signorile from the Huffington Post remarked, when discussing this particular article, Romney was not afraid of showing his bigotry towards homosexuals even when face to face with them:
Romney hadn't even previously fathomed that gay people had children. Boston Spirit magazine reported last month that when gay activists met with him in his office in 2004, as Romney was backing a failed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, Romney remarked, "I didn't know you had families." Julie Goodridge, lead plaintiff in the landmark case that won marriage rights for gays and lesbians before the Supreme Judicial Court, asked what she should tell her 8-year-old daughter about why the governor would block the marriage of her parents. According to Goodridge, Romney responded,"I don't really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don't you just tell her the same thing you've been telling her the last eight years."
Romney's retort enraged a speechless Goodridge; he didn't care, and by referring to her biological daughter as "adopted," it was clear he hadn't even been listening. By the time she was back in the hallway, she was reduced to tears. "I really kind of lost it," says Goodridge. "I've never stood before someone who had no capacity for empathy."
Romney, the President for all Americans. Except if you are int he 47% and homosexuals of course..
