One day after President Obama stated that he supports same sex marriage, Mitt Romney has been sticking to his current views (or his personal preference, as he once put it) that he doesn't support it, so much so that he complained to a reporter who questioned him on it that it wasn't a "significant issue."
Well, today that "insignificant issue" has come back to haunt him even though he hopes voters will brush off what he calls "teasing, taunts, hijinks and merely a prank" as easily as he did.
Most people call it what it is: Bullying.
From the Washington Post:
John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”]
[A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
The Post story claims that five of Romney's classmates who retold it independently recall the same story:
“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”
“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”
“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.
No remorse today from Romney though, who says he doesn't recall the incident, but says as a kid he did "dumb things" and participated in "hijinks" and then said (stop me if you've heard this non-apology before):
"Again, if there’s anything I said that is offensive to someone, I certainly am sorry for that, very deeply sorry for that."
Not sorry it happened, just deeply sorry if his actions should offend any potential voters. Oh, but wait, there's more:
“Back in high school, I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that,” Romney said in a live radio interview with Fox News Channel personality Brian Kilmeade. Romney added: “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far, and for that I apologize.”]
[“I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said, laughing. “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.”
Asked specifically about having interrupted a closeted gay student in English class, Gary Hummel, by shouting, “Atta girl!” Romney said, “I really can’t remember that.”
“As this person indicated, he was closeted,” Romney said. “I had no idea that he was gay and can’t speak to that even today. But as to the teasing or the taunts that go on in high school, that’s a long time ago. For me, that’s about 48 years ago. Again, if there’s anything I said that is offensive to someone, I certainly am sorry for that, very deeply sorry for that.”
Romney said that after marrying his high school sweetheart, Ann, and going on a Mormon mission to France, he is “a very different person.”
So let's look at this "apology," shall we? First of all, he doesn't remember doing it but he's absolutely certain that he didn't suspect his victim was a homosexual. So does that mean that picking out one kid in school who doesn't have hair to your liking deserves to be pinned down while you cut that hair off by force as he cries? Is that what all the trust fund kids do in school, or is it just some Romney family traditional "hijinks" like strapping an innocent dog to the roof of your car?
As for his explanation that someone could be homosexual would have been the furthest thing from his mind back in the sixties? Oh, that's right, homosexuality didn't exist before the sixties. What was I thinking?
While we're on the subject though, if someone's sexual orientation was the furthest thing from Mitt's mind, then why was he so certain that the other incident where he shouted "atta girl" involved a "closeted" individual? As Mitt himself said above, he had no idea the person was gay and to this day there's no proof! He was closeted for Pete's sake!
Let's look at the last part of the excerpt again:
"But as to the teasing or the taunts that go on in high school, that’s a long time ago. For me, that’s about 48 years ago."
As much as Mitt thinks none of this matters because it was just high school and a very long time ago, tell that to the kids in high school (and younger) today who are being bullied every single day because of their sexual orientation, or even just their perceived orientation.
Tell that to the parents who have to bury their own children today who could no longer bear this kind of treatment from their peers and committed suicide because people like Mitt Romney, the leader of the Republican Party who wants to lead the country I might add, feels this kind of behavior is merely a prank, and perfectly OK.
It's bad enough that Mitt Romney doesn't care to recognize that this is a problem, he can't even offer a sincere apology for it.
Just another solution all that money can't buy.
People like Mitt Romney are part of the problem.
