Ole Moderate Mitt
by digby
Michelangelo Signorile:
In my last blog post, which lit up the Internet and social media, I quoted Mitt Romney making shocking remarks that were highlighted in investigative reporter Murray Waas' Boston Globe story last week. Now, for the first time in this campaign, video has surfaced of Romney making those bigoted claims about gay parents while pushing his heartless policy against their children.
One of two video clips that Waas has now uploaded to YouTube shows Romney speaking to conservative voters in South Carolina in 2005, as he was testing the waters for a presidential bid in 2005, discussing his battle with the Registry of Vital Statistics and Records regarding the birth certificate forms...
The second clip, from C-SPAN, includes footage of Romney speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., a few months earlier (at the 6:11 mark). In that clip he speaks about child development.
[...]
Romney outlined his battle with the Registry of Vital Statistics to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding changing the birth certificate forms. He defended his position to the Judiciary Committee (and again claimed it was about changing the form to include boxes labeled "parent A" and "parent B" when that was not the case) even as a Massachusetts Department of Health attorney warned that it didn't conform to legal statues and could disadvantage the children later in life, impeding their ability to apply for school and get passports, drivers licenses or other forms of identification, particularly in a post-9/11 world where they might be viewed as security risks with altered birth certificates.
As Signorile concludes:
What seems clear now, looking at Romney's record, in which he made a lot of promises to gays in those early years but never delivered, is that the pandering he did was to gay activists and the voters of Massachusetts, as the devout Mormon used that state as a stepping stone to the presidency. The real Romney is the guy who actually delivered to cultural conservatives and sought to harm the children of gay couples, and who is now running for president with the backing of those very same religious extremists.
If there is one thing that is obvious about Mitt Romney it is that he is an extremely traditional white male conservative. Every time he's asked about any kind of cultural change or social progress you can almost see the cogs turning in his mind, trying to figure out how to talk about it in a way that doesn't betray the fact that these changes go against his deeply held personal and religious beliefs. He's the poster boy for patriarchy.
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