Romney's Past Pro Gay Support Wont Go Away Despite His Reversal

  Denis Dison   

In a 1994 campaign to unseat the late civil rights hero Sen. Edward Kennedy, his Republican opponent wrote a letter pledging to be a better advocate for LGBT equality than the sitting senator.  Seventeen years later, that letter still haunts the political fortunes of the candidate who wrote it–former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Romney’s ‘94 letter seeking support from the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts read in part, “I am not unaware of my opponent’s considerable record in the area of civil rights. For some voters, it might be enough to simply match my opponent’s record in this area.  But I believe we can and must do better.  If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.”

Romney went on to pledge he would co-sponsor federal legislation that would ban anti-gay bias in employment and housing, and said he longed for the day when gays and lesbians could serve openly in the U.S. military.  (See the full letter here.)

The letter’s unmistakably strong language alarmed social conservatives in 2006, when Romney first sought to become the GOP presidential nominee.  Tony Perkins, who heads the anti-gay Family Research Council, calledthe revelation, “quite disturbing.”

“This is going to create a lot of problems for Governor Romney.  He is going to have a hard time overcoming this,” Perkins said.

Romney has since largely repudiated the positions in the letter, saying he now opposes an employment non-discrimination law and rejects allowing out gay and lesbian troops to serve.  But as the frontrunner for the GOP nod in 2012, Romney again must face the powerful socially conservative wing of the Republican party as hedecides whether to compete in the Iowa caucuses early next year.

New York Times political correspondent Jeff Zeleny, who has written about the dominance of social conservatives in Iowa Republican politics, today explores the Romney camp’s calculus:

He has told friends that he felt burned by the process in Iowa four years ago. He invested $10 million and finished second in the caucuses to Mr. Huckabee, who spent a sliver of that amount. Mr. Romney also struggled to connect with religious conservatives and often spent more time trying to convince people that his rightward-shifting positions on abortion and gay rights were changes of heart rather than decisions of political expediency.