W. James Antle, III of American Spectator comes to Mitt Romney's defense on his record of defending marriage:
Even during his most socially liberal campaign, the 1994 run against Ted Kennedy, Romney never openly supported same-sex marriage (at the time, this would not have even been a mainstream position among Democrats). He opposed both same-sex marriage and civil unions while running for governor in 2002, by that time a fairly conservative position by Massachusetts standards. After the Goodridge decision, Romney unsuccessfully requested a stay. He twice cobbled together the votes necessary to advance measures that could have reached the statewide ballot under the commonwealth's byzantine amendment process and possibly overturned the pro-same-sex marriage ruling. He also endorsed a federal marriage amendment.
... Romney probably could have done more to call the legislature into account for dubiously recessing the constitutional convention that was the last, best shot to overturn Goodridge. I think he can also be fairly criticized for abandoning the state in 2006 to run for president, knowing that this would make Goodridge's reversal even less likley. But Romney probably could have spent his entire governorship on the issue and had no more to show for it than he does now.
At this weekend's GOP debate, Mitt Romney interrupts Chris Wallace to make clear he has always supported marriage as one man and one woman and fought hard for a marriage amendment in Massachusetts. Rick Santorum claims, not hard enough:
NOM Co-Founder Maggie Gallagher's most recent column looks at Mitt Romney's record on marriage:
I'm not going to defend Romney from the charge that he has changed his mind -- on abortion he clearly has.
But I do want to take up the one issue I know the most about: same-sex marriage.
Let's compare Romney's and Obama's records of constancy on this one issue, the hot button of all button issues in American politics today.
I'm doing this, in part, because some social conservatives in Iowa appear to have gotten the idea that Mitt Romney is somehow responsible for gay marriage in Massachusetts.
I don't mind anyone criticizing Romney for the things he has done. But this particular attack is grotesquely unfair. I know. I was there.
We are pretty sure most people, including most LGBT people, would say "no."
In Boston, these days, they aren't so sure:
State Police arrested 31 men at the park this past summer, most of them for trespassing, reviving fears in the gay community that the police were once again targeting gay men. The sexual orientation of most of the men is unknown, but their arrests prompted gay-rights advocates to meet recently with high-ranking public safety officials in Governor Deval Patrick’s administration.
... But police officials say the recent work at the Medford park did not target any one group. Their overall goal, they say, was to maintain safety in state-owned parks and protect delicate grounds, which have been damaged by people veering off main paths to use drugs or engage in sex.
Officials at the state Department of Conservation and Recreation said that “men who have sex with men’’ go off main paths at the Middlesex Fells Reservation to have trysts, trampling on natural resources, according to a draft of the department’s resource management plan.
The language rankles advocates, who said it unfairly blames one group of people. DCR officials said they would revise the language in the plan’s final draft. -- The Boston Globe
A Massachusetts middle school passed a new policy yesterday, changing its “passive consent” system for parents — who might be concerned about sexually explicit surveys administered to students — to one that ensures they will only be given to students whose parents have given express written consent.
Arlene Tessitore and The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties law firm, filed a federal lawsuit in June against the Fitchburg City School Committee. Tessitore’s two daughters were told they had to complete a survey asking about their sexual thoughts and birth control practices. The school said parents had been sent an “opt-out” form; without that, parents were assumed to have given their consent. Tessitore said she never received any form, and was appalled by the questions her daughters were asked.
The school’s new policy brings it into compliance with the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
... “This is a huge victory for parental rights,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Parents are the ones who should decide whether they want their children to be mined for information about their personal thoughts, beliefs or practices. We take it seriously when government officials try to short-circuit that essential parent-child relationship.”
In a powerful editorial for The Anchor, the official newspaper for the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, Father Roger Landry calls attention to the pastoral damage done by priests who refuse to convey the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, fearful of opposition from gay-rights activists.
A sample:
If doctors and nurses at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute were aware that a patient was chain-smoking cigars and out of a desire not to displease him said nothing, they would be guilty of unconscionable neglect. If the patient was flaunting his cigar-smoking and attempting to persuade others that, rather than harmful, cigar-smoking was a great practice deserving of celebration instead of censure, the destructive consequences of their reticence would be magnified. Similarly, pastors and parishes who are aware that parishioners are unabashedly engaging in practices contrary to the practice of the faith and who do not strive, with patient, tender and firm preaching and accompaniment, to help them eliminate whatever in them is leading them to sin, are culpable of the worst type of pastoral malpractice.
A federal jury in Boston on Wednesday convicted Salvatore DiMasi, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for corruption connected to the awarding of state contracts.
DiMasi, who resigned in January 2009 amid a scandal, was convicted of a total of seven of nine counts against him, while a lobbyist named Richard McDonough was convicted of six of eight counts against him...
The scandal blew up in a series of reports in the Boston Globe in 2008, after which DiMasi told a law associate to “lose his check register” showing the payments, evidence at trial showed. DiMasi also lied to his press secretary about his associate, and about Lally’s connection to the software company, according to prosecutors.
“The citizens of Massachusetts put extraordinary trust in Mr. DiMasi, and he betrayed that trust when he chose to conspire with his friends to use his office in order to line his pockets, and theirs,” said Carmen M. Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, in a statement.
We already know that there are still gay people entering opposite sex marriages, at least sometimes even after identifying as gay (for example, here).
A 2008 study found that the inverse is also true: not all gay marriages are gay.
In fact about one in 10 women who entered a same-sex domestic partnership in California self-identified as bisexual or heterosexual (as did 8% of women in Vermont civil unions and 5% of women in Massachussetts same-sex marriages).
See Table 2 on page 60 [PDF] in Esther D. Rothblum, Kimberly F. Balsam and Sondra E. Solomon
“Comparison of Same-Sex Couples Who Were Married in Massachusetts, Had Domestic Partnerships in California, or Had Civil Union in Vermont,” Journal of Family Issues 2008.
They say the people now support gay marriage in Massachusetts. So why are politicians there now proposing to limit the right of the citizens of Massachusetts to amend their own constitution?
This is an extraordinary admission they do not trust their own people, even after years of SSM.
SB 12 would amend Article 48 of the constitution to not allow any initiative petition that “restricts the rights set forth in the MA constitution to freedom and equality, or the right of each individual to be protected by society in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, according to standing laws.” In plain English, this amendment would essentially eliminate the citizen initiative process because there are very few subjects that do not deal with freedom, equality, life, liberty and property!
The proponents of this bill claim that it is “too easy” for citizens to amend the constitution, which is preposterous. Placing a proposed amendment before the people through an initiative process is so prohibitively difficult in Massachusetts that the process has rarely, if ever, been used or succeeded. In the history of the Commonwealth, only 13 initiative petitions to amend the constitution ever succeeded in collecting the required number of signatures, and only three of those were approved by the Legislature to go on the ballot, of which two were approved by the voters. (Massachusetts Family Institute)
Jennifer Braceras wrote this op-ed in the Boston Herald:
Pay attention parents! It’s spring. And before you know it, Massachusetts public schools will begin their yearly sex-ed lessons for kids as young as 5.
Of course, they won’t call it “sex ed.” They’ll call it “health.” But a rose by any other name is still a rose.
She tells several stories relating to her experience of having two young girls in public school:
... rather than expose my child [No. 1] to some half-truth in the name of political correctness, or a sex-ed lesson she was not yet ready to learn, I pulled her out.
But, as you might have guessed, child No. 2 was not so easily distracted.
“Mom, everyone says we are learning about HIV tomorrow. What’s HIV, and how come you don’t want me to hear about it?” Thanks, public schools, for opening up that can of worms!
I can only hope that by the time my last two kids reach the third grade our town will have dispensed with this nonsense. But that is unlikely.
Indeed, when specifically asked why the school presents lessons on HIV in the third grade, rather than in middle school, one school administrator made this shocking admission:
“The goal is to reach kids before they absorb their parents’s values. By middle school it’s too late.”
In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick just signed an executive order (#506) requiring affirmative action based on "gender identity and expression" within state government, and for everyone who does business with the state of Massachusetts:
Section 4. All programs, activities, and services provided, performed, licensed, chartered, funded, regulated, or contracted for by the state shall be conducted without unlawful discrimination based on race, color, age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, creed, ancestry, national origin, disability, veteran’s status (including Vietnam-era veterans), or background. Equal opportunity and diversity shall be protected and affirmatively promoted in all state, state-assisted, and state-regulated programs, activities, and services. Non-compliance shall subject violators to such disciplinary or remedial actions as permitted by law. This provision applies, but is not limited to, the use and operation of facilities owned, leased, funded or subject to control by the Commonwealth; the sale, lease, rental, financing, construction, or development of housing; state-licensed or chartered health care facilities, educational institutions, and businesses; education, counseling, and training programs; and public schools.
NOM has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (you can read the entire brief below).
The basic point of the brief is that DOMA falls perfectly within America's long-standing jurisprudence tradition. The federal government has a right to define terms like "marriage" for purposes of federal law. If the federal government could not define such terms the 10th Amendment would quickly become a "reverse-supremacy" clause.
Like Charlie Baker, running for governor of Massachusetts on the GOP ticket. WaPo, swooning, is pretending Baker is following the Scott Brown formula. But Sen. Brown was pro-marriage amendment and far more openly prolife than his opponent. (He describes himself as pro-choice but opposes partial birth abortion and federal funding; He was endorsed by the Susan B. Anthony List as well as NOM.) Baker did manage to sum up the energy to pledge to veto the so-called "bathroom bill" which adds gender identity to Massachusetts discrimination law--similar language in Maine this year lead the Maine Human Rights Campaign to propose integrating bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools and universities.
Baker is running just seven points behind an unpopular state governor in latest polls. Will be interesting to see how this plays out in Massachusetts, but don't hold your breath for anyone named Baker on the ticket in 2012.
Charlie Baker, best of luck, but to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, Scott Brown is a friend of ours, and you are no Scott Brown.
Even during his most socially liberal campaign, the 1994 run against Ted Kennedy, Romney never openly supported same-sex marriage (at the time, this would not have even been a mainstream position among Democrats). He opposed both same-sex marriage and civil unions while running for governor in 2002, by that time a fairly conservative position by Massachusetts standards. After the Goodridge decision, Romney unsuccessfully requested a stay. He twice cobbled together the votes necessary to advance measures that could have reached the statewide ballot under the commonwealth's byzantine amendment process and possibly overturned the pro-same-sex marriage ruling. He also endorsed a federal marriage amendment.
NOM has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (you can read the entire brief below).
