A piece in
The Atlantic looks at Mitt Romney's track record on supporting anti-gay bullying laws and it's not a pretty picture. Of course, after last week's major article by the
Washington Post we all know why: Romney's an anti-gay bully himself who believes that he can abuse and torment those he believes to be gay. As Governor of Massachusetts Romney even withdrew support for gay teen suicide prevention programs. It truly doesn't get much lower. But I'd go even a step further, and say that the anti-gay laws being pushed by the GOP and Romney's anti-gay stances in and of themselves constitute a form of deliberate bullying. Bullying that keeps anti-gay bigotry alive and maintains an atmosphere where bullies feel free to target LGBT people for abuse and even violence. Here are excerpts from
The Atlantic article:
As Massachusetts governor, he underwent an evolution of his own, withdrawing support for a gay teen suicide prevention group. In 2003 and 2004, Mitt Romney signed official proclamations supporting a
gay-pride march sponsored by a nonprofit organization linked to the
Massachusetts Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. The following year,
Romney proposed doubling the commission's budget.
But in 2006, when the nonprofit distributed a press release about the
annual parade for "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender" youth on
official state stationery, Romney threatened to shut the commission down
just days before the event. He quickly relented, but the near-death
experience led the group to reorganize so that it no longer served at
the pleasure of the governor.
The incident is worth revisiting in the wake of a
Washington Post article
detailing Romney's bullying of a presumably gay classmate when he was
in prep school in Michigan in 1965. Former students say Romney, with
help from friends, pinned down the classmate and cut off his
bleached-blond, shaggy hair.
While voters may disagree on what the incident reveals about Romney's
character and whether it is relevant to his presidential campaign,
his
record is clear on issues related to gay youth, who are four times more
likely to commit suicide than their peers, according to studies.
The governor's support for gay youth faded over the course of his four
years in office, which activists on both sides of the debate view as the
calculations of a politician from a liberal state positioning himself
for the national stage. Distribution of an anti-bullying guide that
included a section on gay kids floundered under his administration, and
he cut some funding for suicide prevention at the end of his term.
"I think he was politically opportunistic," said Carly Burton, deputy
director of MassEquality, a leading advocacy group for same-sex
marriage. "He thought he needed to be more moderate to get elected, and
once he saw marriage was such a hot-button issue, he realized he needed
to stake his claim with the other side."
After MassResistance! brought the press release about the parade to
Romney's attention in 2006, Henry got a call from Romney's chief of
staff, Beth Myers, now one of his top campaign advisers. "She said the
commission was no longer in existence," recalled Henry, who immediately
notified the press and some sympathetic legislators, who organized a
sit-in at the governor's office. "He was getting such feedback that
hours later he backed off. It gives new meaning to the term flip-flop."
Romney abolished the hate-crimes task force, which surveyed middle
school students and drafted the anti-bullying guide, in 2003. "The
governor was pushing back against earmarks by legislators, and they
viewed hate-crimes legislation as an earmark," Gorton said. "He was also
starting to court evangelicals, and I think he saw anti-bullying
efforts as expendable to appease the Religious Right."
[I]t's hard for me to believe that he doesn't remember holding a kid down
and cutting his hair off," she [Kathleen Henry chairwoman of the commission at the time and a current member] said. "I would think you would carry
that guilt with you forever."
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