The Courage Campaign SuperPAC and American Bridge 21st Century recently launched a website called "Mitt Gets Worse" (a play on "It Gets Better"), which seeks to illuminate Romney's anti-LGBT agenda. There's some pretty disturbing stuff on there, but perhaps nothing more disturbing than this. Truth Wins Out reported on this and called it "chilling." That's probably the best way to describe what you're about to read/watch.
You may have heard of Julie Goodridge. If not, she was a co-lead plaintiff in the landmark Massachusetts Supreme Court case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which legalized marriage equality in Massachusetts in 2004. She's kind of a big deal, in other words. And she has a very moving story. Truth Wins Out sums it up in a nutshell:
When she gave birth to her daughter Annie in 1995, there were severe complications. Annie was rushed to the intensive care unit, so Goodridge’s then-partner Hillary followed in order to be with their child. When Hillary tried to return to her partner’s bedside, she was denied entry into the recovery room because she was not recognized as Goodridge’s next of kin. Distraught, Hillary then attempted to rejoin their daughter in the ICU, but was barred from seeing her daughter because she wasn’t regarded as the infant’s “real mother.”
Understandably, Goodridge took the marriage equality battle personally. She became an activist and spent a great deal of time educating people about the need for marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. During that period, she and other activists sought to meet with then-Governor Romney. Romney refused to see them at first, but under what Goodridge describes as media pressure, he relented. This is the man, in case you don't remember, who ran for the United States Senate in 1994 and
promised to be better for gay rights than Ted Kennedy. But it gets worse, no pun intended.
What the meeting demonstrated to Goodridge and the other activists was just how chillingly lacking in empathy Romney really was (and is). Despite the fact that Goodridge was a high-profile plaintiff in a landmark case, he acted as if he didn't know who she was. Then, at the end of the meeting--which had accomplished nothing--things took a turn for the more disturbing when Goodridge asked him a question that would, in any empathetic human being, arouse some kind of decency. Not so with Mitt. I'll let Goodridge recount the conversation:
I looked [Romney] in the eye as we were leaving the meeting, and I said in exasperation, "Governor Romney, tell me: what would you suggest I say to my eight-year-old daughter about why her mommy and her ma can’t get married? Because you, the governor of her state, is going to block our marriage." And he looked at me, and he said — kind of looked over my shoulder with this blank stare and said — "I don’t really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don’t you just tell her what you’ve been telling her for the last eight years?"
She adds:
I have never in my life stood before someone who had no capacity for empathy like Mitt Romney. He didn’t care about my daughter, he didn’t care about what we should tell her, all he cared about was his political future and blocking our rights to get married.
Watch for yourself:
It's no shocker that Mitt Romney doesn't have an ounce of empathy or compassion in his entire body. Nor is it a surprise that he isn't a fan of the gays. But I can never get used to the fact that anybody, much less somebody running for the presidency to serve the people (all the people), could so coldly dismiss the worth of a person's family. There are so many reasons to keep Romney far, far away from the Oval Office. Countless reasons. This one is all I need.