m******1 发帖数: 19713 | 1 Mitt Romney Discloses Contributions to Antigay Groups
By Lucas Grindley
MITT ROMNEY ISN'T WORKING X390 (GETTY) | ADVOCATE.COM
Mitt Romney
Tax returns unveiled by Mitt Romney today show contributions to two antigay
organizations, including one that campaigned against a transgender rights
bill by implying trans people are sexual predators.
The Human Rights Campaign points out a report by CNN that says Romney's
charitable foundation gave at least $35,000 to antigay groups in 2010, with
$10,000 going to the Massachusetts Family Institute, which ran radio ads
last year warning parents that a transgender civil rights bill could lead to
all manner of danger in bathrooms.
One woman said in a radio ad that if the legislation passed (which it did),
she wouldn’t let her daughter use the restroom alone anymore. And the group
's website showed a restroom door with the provocative message, “Who’s
going to be waiting for your wife and daughter?”
The Massachusetts Family Institute is perhaps best known for sponsoring a
2007 anti–marriage equality amendment, which failed to get on the ballot in
that state. Romney was governor there from 2003 until 2007 and opposed same
-sex marriage.
CNN reports that another $25,000 from Romney's foundation went to the Becket
Fund for Religious Liberty. The fund is well known to LGBT activists for
defending the Mormon Church when it was discovered to have financially
backed Proposition 8 in California.
It placed a full-page ad in The New York Times defending the church.
“The violence and intimidation being directed against the LDS or 'Mormon'
church, and other religious organizations — and even against individual
believers — simply because they supported Proposition 8 is an outrage that
must stop,” the ad read, according to Truth Wins Out, which said the ad was
filled with lies.
The Times reports that tax returns from Romney, who is a Mormon, put him in
the top one-10th of 1% of all taxpayers in 2010. He tithed regularly, the
Times reports, supplying more than $3 million in 2010 alone to the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Romney's contributions don't match with his recent assertion during a debate
that he doesn't discriminate, the HRC says. When a moderator in New
Hampshire asked how he'd fulfilled his pledge to LGBT voters while running
for Senate that he would be an advocate for their rights, Romney took what
appeared to be an unequivocal line on discrimination.
"If people are looking for someone who will discriminate against gays or who
will in any way try to suggest that people that have different sexual
orientations don't have full rights in the country, they won't find that in
me," Romney said, declaring, "I don't discriminate." |
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