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Mitt Romney: “We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.”

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Boldly Disappointing Everyone

It must suck to be Mitt Romney. Well actually, as Mitt is fabulously wealthy, well-connected, famous, and enjoys the sort of lifestyle where one day you wake up to find your modest 3000 square foot La Jolla, California mansion confining enough to necessitate replacing it with one that is 8000 square feet larger (as he would like to be closer to the waves), it appears to be pretty goddamned sweet to be Mitt Romney. Politically though, it’s been a little rough.

Mitt Romney is the front runner only if you look at the contest in terms of statistical duration. He has been in the top tier of candidates for longer than any other candidate, just not always in the #1 slot. It was Bachmann for awhile, until people remembered that she was crazy, then Rick Perry for an hour or so, until his campaign proved itself far more valuable as brilliant performance art than as an actual political organization, and now, inexplicably, it is Herman Cain.

Through it all, Mitt Romney has been out there, pleading desperately for the love of a party that really, deep down, can’t stand him. It is, like many old-fashioned Republican marriages, a dry and loveless organism brought about more by appearances and necessity than anything resembling passion. The Republican party may not love Mitt Romney, but in the end they will marry him, if for no other reason than that it will give them someone with health insurance who will help raise the kids.

In the meantime however, Mitt must stand by and watch all the other candidates have their seasons in the media spotlight, biding his time, taking solace in the consistency and depth of his convictions.

I’m joking, of course. Mitt Romney has no deeply held convictions, or to be more specific, he has one deeply held conviction: This man wants to be president. He will say whatever he has to in order to see that goal achieved. He reminds me a lot of John Edwards like that. I felt like Obama ran for president because he believed in things, Romney just seems to want the resume upgrade.

With Romney being such a moving target, it can be hard to know exactly where he stands on anything. Most of the time I simply assume that his views exactly reflect those of the people in his immediate vicinity. Like when he told unemployed Floridians during an appearance, “I’m also unemployed.” That sort of political tone deafness is a clue. This man will say anything.

What then does this mean for LGBT equality should he get elected? Nothing good. The 2012 Model of Mitt Romney is pretty anti-gay. Mind you, he’s not Tony Perkins, Fred Phelps anti-gay, he’s a more watered down, less confrontational brand of bigot.

In fact, gay rights is an area that serves as a wonderful test case for learning more about the craven pander-bot that is Mitt Romney.

See, in 1994, Mitt was running for the Senate in Massachusetts in an effort to unseat Ted Kennedy. And yes, you read that correctly, he was running against a Kennedy in Massachusetts. Just think of that when you consider the strength of Romney’s judgement. That he thought he could pull this off is foot stomping, pee your pants hilarious.

Now, as Massachusetts is a pretty Liberal state, Mitt had to perform some fairly impressive political gymnastics regarding his platform in order to become in any way viable. This meant  attempting to cut into Kennedy’s base by kissing a few asses not normally fondled by Republican candidates. It was in this atmosphere that Mitt wrote a letter to the Log Cabin Republicans, asking for their support. Here is an excerpt:

“As a result of our discussions and other interactions with gay and lesbian voters across the state, I am more convinced than ever before that as we seek to establish full equality for gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.”

“I am not unaware of my opponents considerable record in the area of civil rights, or the commitment of Massachusetts voters to the principle of equality for all Americans. For some voters it might be enough for me to simply match my opponent’s record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.”

“We have discussed a number of important issues such as the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination act ENDA, which I have agreed to Cosponsor, and if possible, broaden to include housing and credit, and the bull to create a federal panel to find ways to reduce gay and lesbian youth suicide, which I also support. “

He goes on to talk about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and how Clinton took a step in the right direction but that he wanted to see troops able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military. Seriously. He totally said that. And get a load of this:

 

Right? Who is this guy? Where did this Mitt Romney go? Listen to the language he’s using. He talks about “full equality” and the plague of gay and lesbian youth suicide. In the full text of the letter he twice mentions the need to make gay and lesbian equality a mainstream concern. He wants to cosponsor ENDA for crying out loud, and even expand it to include all the housing stuff.

These are the words of a man who understands the situation. The person who wrote that letter gets it. You don’t use words like “civil rights” otherwise. Once you are to that stage of evolution in your thinking about LGBT rights, there really is no way to go back to the “homos make the baby Jesus cry” mindset.

But of course, he was lying. Or he’s lying now. Take ENDA for example, which in 1994 he was eager to co-sponsor. What the hell is this then, from the December 16, 2007 Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT:  You said that you would sponsor the Employment Nondiscrimination Act.  Do you still support it?

GOV. ROMNEY:  At the state level.  I think it makes sense at the state level for states to put in provision of this.

MR. RUSSERT:  Now, you said you would sponsor it at the federal level.

GOV. ROMNEY:  I would not support at the federal level, and I changed in that regard because I think that policy makes more sense to be evaluated or to be implemented at the state level.  And let me describe why.

MR. RUSSERT:  So you did–you did change.

GOV. ROMNEY:  Oh, Tim, if you’re looking for someone who’s never changed any positions on any policies, then I’m not your guy.

He never gets around to describing why, in case you were curious.

I consider ENDA a critical piece of the civil rights puzzle. This isn’t one of those issues, like flag burning for example, that is largely symbolic and that you can safely throw around without actually hurting anyone. I live in a state where my employers could fire me on the spot for being gay, and I would have absolutely no legal recourse whatsoever. This is part of the terrifying reality of being gay in America. That is what ENDA is about for me, and I find his flexibility on the issue disturbing.

The problem is that if you leave stuff like this up to the states, it will never ever, ever ever ever, happen. If I live to be 1000 years old, the confederacy will never pass ENDA, or institute marriage equality. There would still be segregation in Mississippi if the federal government hadn’t forced them knock it off. Mitt Romney is wrong here, and he knows he is wrong. This paints a picture of a man who is willing to sacrifice what is morally right if it stands in the way of his presidential aspirations. I don’t want a man like that in charge of the bake sale cash box, much less the most powerful military the planet has ever known.

This was never about civil rights for Mitt Romney. That 1994 letter was simply an exercise in varsity level pandering. He obviously understands our side of the issue, as his language clearly indicates, he just doesn’t care. His behavior is premeditated. Right now, he needs to hate gay people to get elected, so he will do things like sign the National Organization for Marriage’s stupid pledge promising to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. This from a man who wrote so passionately about “full equality.”

Then again, he would still like our vote, if he could possibly get it. Watch him try to not sound like an asshole in this clip from a town hall thing he did last week:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iGJ3J1uUN0o%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US%26rel%3D0

For those of you who didn’t watch, he gets grilled on marriage equality, and trots out the current line of of boilerplate horse crap about a man and woman raising children being the ideal, and how marriage should be reserved for them. (No word on why he’s cool with childless marriages, but whatever.) He then goes on to throw a bone to gay people in the way of allowing the formation of “partnership agreements,” saying that these would allow same-sex couples to have “hospital visitation rights and similar benefits of that nature.”

First of all, go to hell, Mitt Romney. We were looking for some of that “full equality for gay and lesbian citizens” you were talking about before. Not “partnership agreements.” There are no half-measures regarding civil rights. Second class citizenship is not to be tolerated.

Second, this is exactly why Mitt Romney has such a hard time winning people over. On one side, he opposes marriage equality so that the Fred Phelps wackos will like him, on the other, he panders to gay people with his weak offer of “Partnership Agreements.” It’s not enough for either of us.

But that’s Mitt Romney. Never afraid to take both sides of a black and white issue.

This situation reminds me of something my mother used to say when I was a kid. “Cheaters cheat. If he cheated on someone to be with you, then he’ll cheat on you to be with someone else.” Keep that in mind, Republicans. If he cheated on us, then what makes you think he won’t cheat on you, too?

 (Image, top)

Benjamin Phillips is a Humor Writer, Web Developer, Civics Nerd, and all around crank that spends entirely too much time shouting with deep exasperation at the television, especially whenever cable news is on. He lives in St. Louis, MO and spends most of his time staring at various LCD screens, occasionally taking walks in the park whenever his boyfriend becomes sufficiently convinced that Benjamin is becoming a reclusive hermit person. He is available for children’s parties, provided that those children are entertained by hearing a complete windbag talk for two hours about the importance of science education, or worse yet, poorly researched anecdotes PROVING that James Buchanan was totally gay. If civilization were to collapse due to zombie hoards or nuclear holocaust, Benjamin would be among the first to die as he has no useful skills of any kind. The post-apocalyptic hellscape has no real need for homosexual computer programmers who can name all the presidents in order, as well as the actors who have played all eleven incarnations of Doctor Who.

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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3 days ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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