Letter to My Gay Best Friend's pro-Romney Parents

This post addresses a theme that this blog has looked at before: the disconnect between those voters who say they have gay and lesbian friends  - or perhaps even family members - who nonetheless intend to vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.   Why not just look your friend or family member in the eye and spit in their face.  That's what you are basically doing if you vote Republican.  While you are at it, why not advocate for a reimplementation of the sodomy laws.  If one looks at the GOP party platform, that more or less the ultimate goal.  Those who claim gays as friends, family members or neighbors whom they purport to care about simply cannot have it both ways.  A vote for Romney/Ryan equates to telling you friend, neighbor or family member that you support keeping them a third or fourth class citizen and that you believe that they should be subject to being fired at will simply because of their sexual orientation - something they had no choice in whatsoever.  A piece Huffington Post contains a letter the author sent to the Romney loving parents of a gay friend so that there would be no misunderstanding as to what they were doing to their own son.  Here are highlights:

I feel compelled to ensure you know just what Mitt Romney believes and promises to do about gay people like me and your son, Z. For I fear that many people have the vague sense that Romney can't be that bad on gay rights, but they haven't really gotten all the information. And even when they hear tidbits trickling out, they haven't fully absorbed what a Romney presidency could mean for the gay people they love.

Romney not only opposes your son's right to marry the person he loves, but opposes civil unions, a back-of-the-bus version of relationship recognition designed to do nothing but remind gay couples that they're lesser. That puts Romney to the right of George W. Bush who supported civil unions, and well to the right of Dick Cheney, who supports marriage equality. Marriage is not a mere abstraction or symbol -- a government study found that it provides over 1,100 crucial rights and protections, and states provide many more.

It gets worse: Romney doesn't only oppose marriage equality, he supports tearing a hole in the U.S. Constitution to ban it, using the amendment process for the first time ever to remove instead of protect a right. This could annul tens of thousands of existing marriages, yanking away rights and tearing families apart. If you think I'm being dramatic, check out this report I helped author showing that the two million children of LGBT parents have become "collateral damage" of anti-gay ideology and law.

Romney doesn't only oppose marriage for gays, he finds the prospect of gay parenting to be anathema to all that's good and civil. As governor of Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe, he "opposed child-rearing by gay couples" and when his state's Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, he refused to grant accurate birth certificates to kids born to same-sex couples. 

It gets worse: Romney approves of the idea that states should be free to bar your son from entering the hospital to sit by the bedside of his dying partner (don't worry -- he's not dying!) And he puts his considerable money where is mouth is. He's donated at least $60,000 to anti-gay causes. That's more than a lot of Americans make in a year.

It gets worse: Romney signed a pledge with a fiercely anti-gay organization that he would appoint federal judges who would block gay rights.

Think Mitt's a moderate dressed up as a "severely conservative" candidate (as he's called himself)? What I've described above are not only his words but his thoughts, his beliefs, his actions, his record. These are the things he thinks, says and does. He did them when in power, and will do them again. Because the day he enters the White House, he's running for a second term. He still needs to hold his coalition together. And he's shown what he'll do to maintain power.

In at least three cases, gay people who worked under Romney were fired or forced out when their identities became public -- in all three cases, Romney was wooing the right wing by showing how tough he was on gays.

Many have called LGBT equality the civil rights issue of our time. I think they're right. Now that the two candidates have offered us the starkest choice ever on this critical issue, the choice you make will become part of your legacy. With whom do you want to cast your vote? Which camp reflects who you are and who you want to be?  .   .   .  .   If you're pausing even for a moment to consider voting for Obama,  I hope you'll do it, if you do it, because having processed the available information, you've decided it's what you think is right.

To put this all in context in another way, if one claims to care about gays yet will be casting a vote for Romney/Ryan, it is little different than someone from 50 years ago saying that they like blacks and aren't racists who then votes for a pro-segregationist candidate.  And, yes, this post is addressed as well to some of my friends and neighbors who want to stick their head in the sand and pretend that their vote for Romney won't directly harm me and other gays that they claim to care about.  They are engaging in an intellectually dishonest - and I would also argue a morally bankrupt  - cop out.  I and others will be watching and should Romney win on Tuesday, I for one will not forgive or forget.  I have no desire to be around or associate with people who support those who hate me and seek to keep me inferior regardless of whatever excuses they concoct for themselves to make them selves feel OK.  I and others will still be harmed and their bullshit feel good excuses to themselves will not change that reality.