Governor Romney Denied Children Accurate Birth Certificates
Mitt Romney is no friend to the LGBT community, that is well-known. A less discussed chapter in Governor Romney’s interaction with the LGBT community are the obstructions he threw in the way of loving families while he was governor of the state. To be specific, he fought tooth and nail to prevent a simple change on the birth certificate form to reflect a child’s parents, if that child happened to be born to or adopted by a same-sex couple.
What he did was the antithesis of small government. According to the Boston Globe, then Governor Romney prevented the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics from making a chance to the birth certificate forms to reflect same-sex parents. The change was simple, the box “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent.” Simple change which met the requirements of the new law.
// ]]>
Instead, Governor Romney ordered that the states legal staff had to individually review each and every birth certificate, and only if approved would they manually cross off “father” and replace it with “second parent” manually. If it was a male couple, they had to deal with a full court order to have either name placed on the birth certificate.
By law, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts must issue birth certificates within 10 days. Due to these conditions imposed by the governor, the state was unable to meet this condition. It was also handled inconsistently, with multiple cases which were identical but handled entirely differently.
When confronted with this while serving his term, the Romney administration denied that they were at fault, pointing blame to the Legislature. The Department of Public Health, through their lawyer, directly contradict this, and the documents gained by the Globe back them up.
When Romney was replaced by Governor Deval Patrick, the necessary changes were done virtually overnight, finally giving marriage equality as required by law. No legislative action required.
Mitt Romney ran for Senator in 1994 as a friend of the LGBT community. It is clear now, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
Related posts:
