Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
He said he was a friend of the gay community.
He tried to block our marriages.
There's no doubt in my mind
that if Mitt was elected president,
it's going to get a lot worse.
My name's Julie Goodrich, and I was half of the lead plaintiffs in the
Massachusetts
marriage case that brought same sex marriage to the commonwealth.
Mitt Romney
did everything he could possibly do to block our ability to get married.
But I was still really hopeful, you know, I, in some ways, I'm sort of the
eternal optimist, and I went and I thought "You know what?
If we can change the minds of all of these citizens in Massachusetts,
to understand why we need to be married, why our family needs to be protected, you
know, we can talk to the Governor."
So we went in to try to talk to him, and you know, it was
truthfully
the most frustrating experience that I had in the entire marriage case, and
during that time, both Hillary and I had some pretty frustrating
conversations.
But this one took the cake.
When we met with Mitt,
he didn't know who we were,
he didn't have time to meet with us in advance, he wouldn't schedule an
appointment with us.
He met with us only because
he was being forced to by the media.
I looked him in the eye as we were leaving the meeting,
and I said in exasperation,
"Governor Romney, tell me,
what would you suggest I say to my eight-year-old daughter about why her
mommmy and her ma
can't get married,
because you, the governor of her state,
is going to block our marriage."
And he looked at me and he said,
kind of looked sort of over my shoulder with this blank stare and said,
"I don't really care what you tell your adopted daughter.
Why don't you just tell her what you've been telling her for the last eight
years?"
Our entire story
was about the fact that when I gave birth to Annie,
there were such severe complications that she was rushed off to neonatal
intensive care.
Hillary had to go with Annie, and then she couldn't get back into see me in
recovery because she wasn't my next of kin.
And then when she tried to see me and wasn't allowed she tried to get
back in to see Annie, and she couldn't go into see Annie because she wasn't seen as her
real mother.
This story was in every single,
it was in the New York Times. It was in People Magazine. It was in every single
public media outlet that their there was.
It was on the front of Newsweek.
But the governor of the state of the first gay marriage case in this country
didn't feel it was necessary to read about who we were,
and why we wanted these rights?
I have never in my life
stood before someone who had no capacity for empathy
like Mitt Romney.
He didn't care about my daughter. He didn't care about what we should tell
her.
All he cared about was his political future and blocking our rights to get
married. Gay marriage
is thorn
in Romney's side. His goal
is to make it go away.
He doesn't believe that we need rights, or want rights, or deserve rights.
I have never felt so strongly
that this man cannot be the next President of the United States.
Because let me tell you,
it gets worse.
And Mitt is going to make it worse.