HRC Blog

Check out Mitt Romney’s Anti-LGBT Track Record

August 9, 2012 by Dan Rafter, Online Campaigns Manager

HRC is launching a new website chronicling Mitt Romney’s long and often muddled stances on issues of LGBT equality. We'll be tracing Romney’s actions and public statements as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1994, throughout his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts, and through his 2008 and 2012 presidential runs.

We’ll be updating the site throughout the campaign to reflect the latest on Romney’s LGBT equality record. Some of the major areas addressed include his conflicting statements on LGBT discrimination, workplace protections, and his fluidic position on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” –

In 1994, while seeking to appeal to Massachusetts’ more progressive voters, Romney said he supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. By 2006 Romney no longer supported ENDA, saying it would “unfairly penalize employers at the hands of activist judges.”
While courting the support of the Massachusetts Log Cabin Republicans in 1994, Romney called open military service a “shared goal.” But 13 years later, as his national ambitions increased, Romney had changed his mind, telling ABC News: “Now is not the time for a change in that regard, and I don't have a policy posture as to allowing gays in the military to serve there openly.”
While Mitt Romney insists he opposes discrimination against LGBT people, his actions and his alignment with the National Organization for Marriage tell a different story. In fact, the NOM marriage vow he signed requires him to, among other things, push for a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, appoint only anti-LGBT judges, threaten the marriages of same-sex couples in the District of Columbia, and create a McCarthy-like commission to investigate those who do not support NOM’s extremist agenda.