Of course things changed when he became the governor of the first state to legalize gay marriage and he found himself having to preserve, protect, and defend the homophobia of the Religious Reich and the Republican base he's going to have to win over in order to get the nomination. Now he's working very hard to prove his creds to the homophobes and the Talibangelistas, but he's also trying to sound like he's not a complete bigot. Therefore he comes up with quotes like this:
"I'm not in favor of discrimination of any kind including people who have a different sexual preference than myself," Romney said during the brief interview. "At the same time I'm very committed to traditional marriage between one man and one woman and believe that marriage should be preserved in that way."Aside from the fact that simple Vulcan 101 logic dictates that you can't say you're opposed to discrimination yet you would still deny gays and lesbians the right to marry since that would be a sterling example of discrimination, let's put Mr. Romney's quote to a simple test by simple substitution using terms of equal validity:
"I'm not in favor of discrimination of any kind including people who have a different skin color than myself," Romney said during the brief interview. "At the same time I'm very committed to traditional marriage between one white man and one white woman and believe that marriage should be preserved in that way." [Substitutions in bold.](I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he also means "one black man and one black woman," although given Mormon history, you can't be too sure.)
There are those who will argue that "sexual preference" is not the same thing as race. First, to call it a "preference" is wrong because that implies a choice; a person can prefer one thing over another only when they're offered a choice. No reputable scientific proof exists that sexual orientation is determined outside of the womb; all of the studies by reputable science indicates that there is an overwhelming genetic trend towards homosexuality rather than environment. (There is, however, a lot of pseudoscience that says it is "learned." Google "homosexuality"+genetics and you find a lot of research mainly from fundamentalist religious organizations and "gay reparative therapists" that parallels the scientific research in Germany in 1930's that proved that Jews were subhuman.) After all, if a child grows up in a household that "makes" him or her gay; i.e. the old canards of strong mother/distant father, wouldn't all the children in the family be gay? (That would be news to my three very straight siblings.) So if we accept the premise that sexual orientation isn't chosen, it has to be something that is hard-wired at the factory, much as handedness. So how foolish would Gov. Romney be if he said:
"I'm not in favor of discrimination of any kind including people who have a different handedness than myself," Romney said during the brief interview. "At the same time I'm very committed to traditional marriage between one right-handed man and one right-handed woman and believe that marriage should be preserved in that way."?Pretty damn foolish, I'd say.
Finally, there's the question of equal rights. The rights we enjoy as citizens of this nation are binary: we either have them or we do not. There are no half-way measures, and even when some rights are denied, they are done so through due process when a citizen proves, through a willful act, that they deserve to lose that right. But the Fourteenth Amendment ensures that equal rights are just that; equal to all. They cannot be denied by accident of birth or race. And when citizens are denied one right, they might as well be denied all them, because to lose one right makes the others meaningless.
So explain to me why Gov. Romney's statement isn't illogical, discriminatory, disingenuous, and pandering to the homophobia that should be wiped out as the last vestige of legal discrimination in this country.
(HT to Shakespeare's Sister.)
