During a cozy getaway with the Log Cabin Republicans at a Virginia farmhouse last week, Mitt Romney allegedly came around on some important LGBT issues. Of course, he was riding a carousel at the time, so where he’ll stop nobody knows.
Log Cabin Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper told The Nation‘s Ben Adler that the governor not only supports ending workplace discrimination – though not necessarily the “current form“of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act – but also gay adoption, hospital visitation rights for same sex couples and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Adler then points out that “the Romney campaign has undermined Cooper’s claims on two of those”:
Back in May, Romney told Fox News that “[gay couples] have a right,” to adopt children. But the very next day he told CBS affiliate WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina, that he was observing a national consensus, not asserting a belief of his own. “That’s a position which has been decided by most of the state legislatures,” said Romney. “So I simply acknowledge the fact that gay adoption is legal in all states but one.”
Regarding hospital visitation rights, Romney surrogate Bay Buchanan said after Monday’s presidential debate that Romney believes decisions on gay marriage and related issues such as hospital visitation and adoption should be left up to the states. This was off-message to both the right and the left. It blatantly contradicts Romney’s pledge to support a federal ban on gay marriage. But it also implies that Romney would reverse the Obama administration’s 2010 executive order requiring hospitals participating in Medicare and Medicaid to recognize the visitation rights of gay couples.
Buchanan later clarified her statements, insisting that she had “referred to the Tenth Amendment only when speaking about these kinds of benefits – not marriage.” Romney does support a federal ban on same-sex marriage but believes the issues of hospital visitation rights and gay adoption should be left up to the state.
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This wavering between “ultra-conservative” and “relatively moderate,” however, threatens to alienate the ultra conservatives, like American Family Association nut-job Bryan Fischer. Adler rang up Fischer, who had this to say about a possible deal with LCR:
“If Governor Romney gives up any ground on ENDA that is a huge problem for social conservatives. ENDA will do to every Christian businessman in America what Obama’s abortion mandate does to hospitals, which is robs them of religious freedom and freedom of conscience and their constitutional right to freedom of association. I think if a President Romney were to give an impetus to an ENDA-like bill that would create a firestorm in his conservative base. It would not be smart politics for him to do that, as well as being wrong.”
Fischer later tweeted that “we need a clear, unambiguous, no loophole denial from Gov. Romney that he will support ENDA as president.” But, hey, if Bryan Fischer wants a “flat emphatic, unambiguous denial from Romney himself,” Romney should just give it to him, then take it back when R. Clarke Cooper is looking. It’s not cheating if you don’t get caught…or if you’re a Mormon. So if Mitt Romney continues to get in bed with both of them, he should really put a ring on it.
Aidan8
How big of Mitt to think I should be able to visit my partner in the hospital. Wow. That just warms my heart. I’m joining LCR and GOProud right now!
Dumdum
Classic Romney. Commit to nothing. ALL politicians are by nature at worst dishonest, at best duplicitous. They learn early on how to speak without ever really saying anything. They are just like the popular girls in High school who say the right things to the right people and always take the popular view. This whole business of leaving the question of equality up to individual states is total bulls**t. Red state blue state hurry up and fu**ing wait.
Cam
This is damage control by Log Cabin. They have been getting lambasted for endorsing Romney so they need to try to come up with a reason.
They are claiming that they had these conversations with Romney but can’t go into detail nor prove that they took place, AND they are saying that Romney won’t come out and publicly back them.
Additionally, Romney’s own camapaign has undermined their claims already.
This is a group that is a shill for an anti-gay candidate, who want to take some of the heat off their backs by trying to lie about their endorsement.
If Romney REALLY promised all that….his campaign wouldn’t be saying exactly the opposit.
BJ McFrisky
Had to get that “Mormon” jab in there, didn’t you?
Nope, no bias here.
@Dumdum: DD, you and I finally, totally and completely agree on something. Politicians are indeed self-important sociopaths with a nice smile and ulterior motives to whatever promises they spew at us. A shiny diploma and a hint of intellect do not a great leader make. Sadly, the genuine ones who truly care are few and far between. And even though I neither condone nor condemn gay marriage, I absolutely believe the decision should be decided on the national stage, not at the state level.
2eo
@BJ McFrisky: mormonism is a religion founded by a mental patient who suffered from Schizophrenia and believed in gold plates buried in America would lead him to Salt Lake City. They also have magic pants and changed their books arbitrarily to allow black people the right to exist.
Everything they have and their entire system is a joke and an affront to genuine intelligence and moral fibre of every sane human being, bar none.
I got cornered by two [I will admit, ridiculously good looking] fellows who were mormon and tried to convert me, sadly they were still trying to convert me after I made it clear I wasn’t interested to the point of nearly following me home, unfortunately for their pushiness all they got was me clipping one of them with my wing mirror.
His underpants never saw what was coming.
BJ McFrisky
@2eo: Hey, I won’t defend Mormonism—I find all religions to be archaic and outdated superstitions (even that Christian one that B. Obama claims to be a part of). I was simply pointing out the author’s cattiness.
Shadeaux
Well, I kinda sorta maybe want to vote for him too, but just like him supporting gay rights, it will never happen.
dregstudios
Obama is the first President brave enough to support the GLBT community’s access to basic civil rights. The church and conservative hands paint a Blackface on him for defending this human-rights issue. Religious doctrine and the bigotry which goes along with it have NO place in politics. Read about how Obama and simple logic are being bamboozled at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/bamboozling-obama.html
Mmartin9095
Government shouldn’t define marriage period. If i take the selfish view. Why does a married couple; with possibly (probably) TWO incomes get a tax break, where as a SINGLE 40 year old man (whether straight, gay, bi, whatever) with ONE income, I do not? Marriage should be about committed love, not politics.
Dumdum
Romney kinda sorta maybe supports Gay rights, like I kinda sorta maybe want to get an STD.
PTBoat
The man signed the NOM pledge. He cannot support even tiny bits of gay rights.
jwrappaport
Romney signed the NOM pledge? I like him less now, which is surprisingly not impossible it seems. I think Brian S. Brown signed the nom pledge by mistake. As in, nom nom nom nom…what a cow.
Shannon1981
The Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud are nothing but Uncle Tom house faggots, to borrow Dan Savage’s words. Perfect description. To think Mittens wants anything but their vote is naive at best. He doesn’t give a damn about gay rights, because most gays won’t go anywhere near the GOP in its current state, and he knows it. It is the Teavangelical Taliban he has to please, and please them he will.
sozei
In their 1989 manuscript, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s, Harvard-educated marketing experts Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen meticulously laid out the homosexual lobby’s blueprint for success in what is widely regarded as the handbook for the “gay agenda.” They devised a three-pronged approach that included the following major strategies:
(1) Desensitization: “Desensitization,” wrote Kirk and Madsen, means subjecting the public to a “continuous flood of gay-related advertising, presented in the least offensive fashion possible. If ‘straights’ can’t shut off the shower, they may at least eventually get used to being wet.” As the authors put it, homosexuals should be portrayed as the “Everyman.” “In no time,” they said, “a skillful and clever media campaign could have the gay community looking like the veritable fairy godmother to Western Civilization.”
(2) Jamming: “Jamming” refers to the public smearing of Christians, traditionalists or anyone else who opposes the gay agenda. Wrote Kirk and Madsen: “Jam homo-hatred by linking it to Nazi horror. Associate all who oppose homosexuality with images of ‘Klansmen demanding that gays be slaughtered,’ ‘hysterical backwoods preachers,’ ‘menacing punks,’ and a ‘tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.’”
Kirk and Madsen added: “In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector … The purpose of victim imagery is to make straights feel very uncomfortable.” In a related move, the authors and their ideological cohorts began to smear anyone who disagreed with their agendas as “homophobes,” “hatemongers,” and “bigots.”
(3) Conversion: Kirk and Madsen called for the “conversion of the average American’s emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media.” “In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America,” they said, “the masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself. Instead, the imagery of sex should be downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social question as much as possible. First let the camel get his nose inside the tent — and only later his unsightly derriere!”
Kirk and Madsen actually admitted that their task was to manufactured a “gay civil rights” movement founded on the premise of widespread homosexual victimization.
sozei
the above was quoted from
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=457