There's a great piece in the current New Republic about a potential complication in Mitt Romney's run as the conservative candidate in the '08 Republican presidential primary: His administration was a bit too gay-friendly for their comfort.
For instance, Romney appointed numerous gays and lesbians, endowed a Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth and, perhaps most damning of all:
Romney's Department of Education distributed a publication, The Little Black Book: Queer in the 21st Century, that includes the following practical information: "There is little risk of STD infection and no risk of HIV infection from playing with pee."All of this comes from a dossier being distributed by a conservative activist named Brian Camenker, who is based in, you guessed it, Waltham, Mass.
I also remember these pro-gay papers being an issue when a previous GOP governor of Massachusetts, Paul Cellucci, was nominated as ambassador to Canada, and some conservative activist went on "Hannity & Colmes" and screamed, "dammit Alan, you're the one who's defending fisting!"
Posted by Stephen Silver at December 23, 2006 12:40 PMI understand what Camenker is trying to say, but Romney has been visibly (editorializing) in the Boston newspapers on his disagreement with certain issues. He is a Republican governor in a heavily democratic state. Just because the state does things does not always mean the governor decided to do them that way. I have read this article and it is really disgusting, and I wonder why The New Republic went into such detail to proliferate this story. I want to view each of the GOP candidates and choose the one that most closely matches my views. A slanted dossier from the radical fringe does not phase me. However, it's "support" by The New Republic leads me to question its nuetrality in the GOP race for 2008.
Posted by: Mark Ratherford at December 27, 2006 12:36 AM