Down there, as folks are wont to say, he had his PAC donate $5,000 to the regressive effort to pass an anti-SSM amendment to the state constitution. S.C. is one of the states that already defines marriage in DOMA terms as one-man/one-woman. This is yet another mean-spirited, anti-democracy bind on future citizens and legislators by writing this discrimination into the state constitution to make it harder to correct when they come to their senses.
By the bye, the Globe covered this, but the S.C. newspapers did not. Tough luck, Willard.
Romney's bribe to the early-Presidential-primary state is the largest single contribution to the anti-SSM effort there. Tradition had it that a vote could be purchased for a couple of dollars or a bottle of cheap whiskey. If this works, per capita, it'll be a cheap investment
O'Malley and Romney from a Bay Windows pic at left, not necessarily playing soccer.Meanwhile, back in Boston, Romney played his incompetent self with the backup of the Nodding Bishops at a press conference calling for the July 12th ConCon to pass the anti-SSM amendment. If that is successful, the vote must repeat at next year's ConCon to put it on the statewide ballot in 2008. The vote there would be a sure loser. Almost daily, support for same-sex marriage grows and people tell pollsters they have gotten over the whole issue.
There's amusing coverage of the local press conference in the Bay Windows article. (Don't make the mistake of thinking that the two dailies will give insightful and full reportage of political debates and dais dances.)
BW's Ethan Jacobs reports on Romney's confused and unintentionally comical response to real questions. We suspect that Jacobs was the reporter asking the questions. They are too insightful and crisp for the usual suspects'.
Romney treated the question of whether gay couples could be good parents "as radioactive, taking pains to answer the question while avoiding any discussion of gay parents," reports BW. The response in all its glory was:
“I believe the ideal setting for raising a child is where there’s a mother and a father, and the development of a child is enhanced by having the attributes of a male and a female part of their parents,” Romney answered. “And of course there’re going to be settings which don’t have that ideal characteristics, as the cardinal indicated, where there’s a single mom or single dad, or where there are grandparents raising children, and in many cases they’ll do just as well. And they’ll have wonderful children and they’ll have a terrific experience in raising their child. But the ideal setting for a society overall is a setting where there’s a mother and a father, and society therefore, every society I know of in the history of the earth has said the right kind of setting that we’re going to encourage and incentivise, recognizing there may be exceptions and there may be great single mom settings that are just as good as a heterosexual couple marriage, but overall on the averages society will be enhanced by having moms and dads associated with the development of a child, and that’s my view as well.”
The reporter, unsatisfied with this tortured response, asked Romney again whether he believed gay and lesbian couples could be good parents. “I think I just indicated that of course there are going to be a wide array of exceptions to the normal observation that children’s development is best enhanced when there’s a mother and a father,” Romney answered, taking care to not actually mention gay and lesbian couples.
A reporter followed up by asking whether ending segregation in the South should have been put to a popular vote, since Romney had argued that civil rights issues should be put up to a popular vote. Romney immediately backpedaled, claiming he had not advocated putting civil rights issues on the ballot, and, inexplicably, seemed to confuse segregation with slavery.“I didn’t say all civil rights should be put up to a popular vote. That is not what I said. What I said is that this is a nation that is ruled by people and the people make the decision. And what I wouldn’t want to do is to have people say, ‘Oh you can’t vote on this and you can’t vote on that,’” he responded, and then, seemingly ignorant of the history of the Civil War, said, “No, all things are ultimately decided by people, and the people of this country were very clear in their decision with regards to slavery, and that was it’s wrong and evil and that’s why it’s not here.”
We should probably discount Romney because of his shameless self-promotion on the drive to be POTUS. Yet, when he is so obviously winging it on issues essential to the commonwealth's and the nation's principles, we have to call him, or in this case let BW do that in his own words.
It is time here to put in another call to clean up our abused ballot-initiative system. We had a gutless attorney general and governor permit the current effort to overturn a Supreme Judicial Court decision proceed, even though that is forbidden by our laws. Now, they both urge this long, expensive, divisive amendment campaign that distracts the government from important business.
Enough with pseudo-democracy! We should never have the majority voting on the rights of any minority. We call for our next governor and our next attorney general to lead the General Court to stop these abusive ballot initiatives.
Tags: massmarrier, ballot initiatives, Mitt Romney, Tom Reilly, Bay Windows, South Carolina
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