I'm a dick.
The
Boston Globe has a report up about all big series of roadblocks Mitt Romney put up as Governor to undermine LGBT families.
It all starts with a relatively simple change needed to address Massachusetts' new status as a marriage equality state:
It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,’’ reflecting the new law.
That's it. Change the state from "mother" and "father" to some gender nuetral language, say "parent."
He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink. [Emphasis mine.]
Seriously?
There was a Massachusetts Bureau in charge of individually deciding who gets to be called a parent and who doesn't?
Ladies and gentleman, I present to you, the leader of the party of small government.
This would be the ideology that believes government should stay out of your lives and certainly not get between decisions made by you and your doctor.
Unless, you doctor wants to name two women or two men on birth certificate, well then, call out the National Guard! Then Massachusetts state government has to step in and intervene individually review each and every birth in the state.
But of course, only for gay people. If you're a woman and give birth to a child, you ask the male taxi driver who drove you to the hospital to agree to be named the father, and there will be no questions asked.
It certainly is far from news that Mitt Romney is a homophobic and a dick.
I am at times just amazed at how petty and mean these people are and the great lengths—and expense—they will go to to make LGBT people's life more difficult. Romney's resistance was to the simple solution, two parents arrive at a hospital they agree they are both parent to the child that is birthed, hospital puts both their names on the birth certificate. Done.
You want petty? We got petty:
In one instance, in which a couple asked that the handwritten alteration for the second parent say “wife” instead of second parent, the request was denied.
But Romney engaged the Massachusetts attorney and forces in his administration to fight this tooth and nail for years. Literally years:
In 2005, the state’s association of town clerks garnered some attention when it complained publicly about the absence of updated forms, calling handwritten changes inappropriate.
I'm amazed what a waste of Massachusetts human resources this whole dust-up was as well. So many people, so many lawyers, so much haggling and over so many years.
Romney’s interventions mostly resulted in delays awarding birth certificates for women married to same-sex partners who gave birth. Gay men seeking parental rights were required to take a different route, by obtaining a court order. By law, birth certificates must be issued within 10 days of birth, and in some instances, those deadlines were not met.
To what aim? To what possible good? In supporting the failed effort to amend the Massachusetts constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Governor Romney said:
“The children of America have the right to have a father and a mother. What should be the ideal for raising a child? Not a village, not ‘parent A’ and ‘parent B,’ but a mother and a father.’’
Fact check: virtually all the studies that claim the "ideal" environment is a two parent household, do not specify heterosexual households. Many included two-parent same-sex households. The conservative right has pulled an intellectually dishonest hat trick of using studies of how children do in single-parent households to apply to all LGBT households, which are by no means the synonymous. The studies they
claim discredit gay people as parents in reality show nothing more than children raised by single parents may face more challenges than children raised by two parents. Which isn't surprising in the least, given two parents have twice the time and money to devote to parenting. Regardless, making gay people's lives more difficult does nothing to make those single parent's lives easier.
The Globe also quotes Romney speaking to a voters in South Carolina in 2005:
“Some gays are actually having children born to them,’’ he declared. “It’s not right on paper. It’s not right in fact. Every child has a right to a mother and father.’’
Guess what? You've lost. And you will always lose, because you can't control whether gays and lesbians and trans people choose to undertake the endeavor of parenthood. Lord knows you'll try your best, but you will never be able to monitor every vagina in America.
By the time a new child is brought into a same-sex family, you've lost. Your efforts to make the news parents' lives more complicated and difficult accomplish nothing—except creating hardship, frustration and grief for the new family. Your delaying an infant a birth certificate will not suddenly motivate the parents to "see the error of their ways" and "go straight."
These actions by the Romney administration were purely punitive in nature and mean-spirited to the core.