Why I Don't Trust Mitt Romney

by Deal W. Hudson

1/28/08

Display Full Article/Printer Friendly | Send to a Friend Catholics would no doubt also be surprised to hear another Romney choice for the bench was Marianne C. Hinkle, who described herself as a longtime active member of Dignity/USA, a group that wants to reform the Catholic Church's views and teachings on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender activity. Romney on Gay Adoption Massachusetts Catholics say that Governor Romney's positions on adoption of children by homosexual couples are contradictory at best, and that inaction on his part contributed to Catholic Charities of Boston exiting their adoption ministry in 2006 after more than 100 years of service. In terms of his public rhetoric, Romney tries to have it both ways. He has been dismissive of same-sex parenting to South Carolina Republicans, saying sarcastically that some gay and lesbian couples "are actually having children born to them," while in Massachusetts, he says he recognizes that homosexual couples "have a legitimate interest in being able to receive adoptive services." Romney's action and inaction on this issue has been different from his stated position. In late 2005 and early 2006, when Catholic Charities of Boston was under fire for having complied with a state regulation requiring adoption agencies to broker adoptions for homosexual couples, Romney initially claimed he could not unilaterally exempt them, as an exemption would require legislation "and would not be something I would be authorized to do on a personal basis." Since legislative leaders had previously declared such legislation would be effectively dead on arrival, Catholic Charities proceeded to exit the adoption business, and Romney's subsequent decision to file legislation asking for the exemption indeed went nowhere, with zero benefit to the agency. Romney refused to use his executive powers to change the regulation, and even former Gov. Michael Dukakis weighed in to say Romney's legislation was "unnecessary," in that "the state's anti-discrimination statutes do not preclude an exemption for the Catholic organization." Abortion is constitutionally protected, yet Catholic hospitals that do not perform abortions on religious principle are not prevented from being reimbursed for Medicaid-eligible services. The liberal Governor Dukakis, who signed the original gay rights bill during his tenure, said there was nothing mandated in this area and observed, "Governors can change regulations if they want to, that's up to them." So why did Romney back down? Romney on Gay Marriage On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled in Goodridge vs. Dept. of Public Health that same-sex couples should not be denied the right to marry in Massachusetts. Since that time, Romney has pushed aggressively for a marriage-protection amendment in Massachusetts. This amendment passed its first round in the legislature on January 2, 2007, but failed to pass in June of 2007, killing that amendment and hopes of any rollback of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts for at least four years, if not forever. Governor Romney, however, previously opposed a 2002 marriage-protection amendment that would have preempted the court ruling of November 2003. Romney has also been one of the more outspoken politicians on the national scene in favor of defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and against activist judges whose rulings paved the way for gay marriage. But what many people don't know, and what is most overlooked by the media, is that John Adams had the foresight in 1780 to write specific provisions in the Massachusetts Constitution, the world's oldest functioning written constitution, to prevent judicial activism of this sort. Unfortunately, Romney made no attempt to exercise most of his constitutional options in order to block same-sex marriages before they began or stop them while in office, and Catholic activists would like to know why. Romney could have declared the ruling null and void, and therefore unenforceable, immediately after it was handed down in November of 2003. How? Article 5 of the Massachusetts Constitution says, "All causes of marriage, divorce, and alimony . . . shall be heard and determined by the governor and council." Romney could have said that the court simply had no jurisdiction to rule over the definition of marriage. The Massachusetts Constitution also has specific provision for removing judges without cause via a "bill of address." Instead of responding to a problem of activist judges by going through a lengthy process of amending the Constitution, the offending judges can simply be removed from office for distorting the Constitution to impose their own views. Such a procedure has been successfully used several times in the past in Massachusetts. In the spring of 2004, Romney could have supported the active grassroots effort and Democratic-sponsored legislation to remove the judges who wrote the Goodridge decision. If Romney was genuinely troubled by the role of "activist judges" in the same-sex marriage issue, why did he refuse to support this move in 2004? Interestingly, on the campaign trail in New Hampshire on November 24, 2007, Romney publicly called for the resignation of a Massachusetts judge after the judge released a violent criminal who then apparently murdered a Washington state couple. Should Catholics assume that the Goodridge judges' radically unconstitutional redefinition of marriage for all of society is not sufficiently serious a matter for Romney to have called for their resignation any time in the past four years? Next, Romney could have followed the precedent of Abraham Lincoln in the 1857 Dred Scott case -- which Romney himself referred to in a Wall Street Journal editorial -- and respected the decision of the Court with regard only to the litigants in that specific case. As Hadley Arkes explained in National Review, Lincoln and his party did not try to set the slave Dred Scott free once the Supreme Court had confirmed him to remain in slavery. Lincoln only accepted the ruling for the parties in the specific case, and he did not allow the public policy of the whole country to be affected by the Supreme Court's decision. Romney could have announced that he would respect the decision for the plaintiffs, but he could have insisted then that clerks issue licenses of marriage only to couples who had come through comparable litigation and received a comparable order from a court. If Romney was such an enthusiast for Lincoln's response to the Dred Scott decision and so determined to block same-sex marriage, why didn't he pursue the same strategy to try and block same-sex marriage from propagating beyond the small group of Goodridge litigants? << Prev - Next >> Page 1 2 3 4