Thread: Keyes: Romney responsible for same-sex marriage fiasco

Keyes: Romney responsible for same-sex marriage fiasco
Charges 'complete misunderstanding' of role as governor, significance of court's opinion

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Posted: February 3, 2008
1:35 a.m. Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

Alan Keyes
Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes may not get invited to the televised debates but that doesn't mean he's going stay out of the fray or not attack his opponents when he believes they've abandoned his party's values – particularly on the issue of same-sex marriage.

On his campaign website this week, Keyes blasted former Gov. Mitt Romney for being "single-handedly responsible for instituting same-sex marriage in Massachusetts" for the way he responded to a state court ruling in 2003.

"Most people are unaware of the way Massachusetts came to adopt same-sex marriage," the former Reagan administration diplomat said. "They think the state's Supreme Judicial Court forced it to happen. That's incorrect."

"The court merely issued an opinion stating that, in its view, the existing marriage law was unconstitutional because it failed to allow persons of the same sex to marry," Keyes said. "The court then gave the legislature 180 days to 'take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion' – implicitly telling lawmakers to come up with a new marriage statute."

Noting that the legislature did not act within the court-imposed 180-day window, refusing to let the judiciary infringe on its law-making powers, Keyes said the only reason same-sex marriage became the law was because of Romney's actions.

"Mitt Romney pushed through same-sex marriage all by himself, in the absence of any authority or requirement to do so, having a complete misunderstanding of his role as governor and of the significance of the court's opinion," said Keyes.

"The court never ordered him to act, nor did he have the right to act, since the legislature never changed the law. Romney claimed he had no other choice, but that's completely untrue."

Keyes' charge echoes reporting by WND last July on Romney's role in implementing 'gay' marriage while he was governor.

Romney's aides told WND that after four of the seven court members reinterpreted the definition of marriage in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the governor believed he had no choice but to direct clerks and others to change state marriage forms and begin registering same-sex couples.

Constitutional expert Herb Titus – Harvard law graduate, founding dean of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School and former candidate for vice-president on the Constitution Party ticket – said Romney got it wrong.

"What Romney did [was] he exercised illegal legislative authority," Titus said. "He was bound by what? There was no order. There wasn't even any order to the Department of Public Health to do anything."

"All the Supreme Judicial Court did was pronounce their judgment, declared their opinion," he told WND. "Gov. Romney is like too many other governors in America. If a court says something, they jump."

Keyes concurred.

"The appropriate course of action for Romney was to do nothing," he said. Instead, "as governor, he created, in essence, his own same-sex marriage rule and then enforced it – reportedly threatening local clerks with dismissal if they refused to comply with his executive order."

And while Keyes called Romney's actions "catastrophic" and "among the most socially-damaging actions by a chief executive in our nation's history," their significance lay in the way he would operate as president.

"The failure by Romney to 'say no' to corrupt activist judges in a critical controversy over 'separation of powers,' and his willingness to take unwarranted steps that exceeded his lawful authority, reveal the kind of chief executive he would be if elected president," Keyes said.

Titus noted that the Massachusetts Constitution probably is the most specific in the nation on the separation of powers.

"It makes it very clear that ... the judiciary doesn't have either executive or legislative power," he said. "It specifically rejects any claim of supremacy by any one of the branches over the other."

But in the Goodridge case, the court said, "We are the supreme expositors on the constitution," he said, even though the justices admitted reformulating the definition of marriage, "which means they have blatantly exercised legislative power."

"It was a phony lawsuit ... much the same way as they have show trials in the communist countries," Titus told WND.


http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=60022

I could care less if Gays get married. Straights don't do a good job of it, and no one gets married for the "children" anymore.


They ought to be able to participate in an outdated institution, and be as miserable as the rest of us.

I don't think gays should be married but I do think they should be able to form a type of civil union so that they are entitled to health insurance, social security etc.

Too bad this was the only issue to be worried about. This so far down on my list that I don't care at all. No issue to me

Does not sound either Republican or conservitive to me.

Wonder where he stands on the 2 ammendment?

'an atheistic mind is already three-fouths conquered."

Alan Keyes is a liar and a hypocrite.

Alan Keyes had always opposed slavery reparations for African-Americans until he ran for United States senator. Then, because of a large African-American population in Illinois, he supported it during his campaign.

I also found his vicious comments about Mary Cheney being a "selfish hedonist" to be disgusting.

tancredofan writes,

"alan Keyes is a liar and a hypocrite."

Yes, that is the problem I have with alot of these "flip-flop" politicians.

Mitt Romney has never changed his position of opposition to in-state tutition rates for illegal aliens nor has he ever changed his position of oppostion to driver licenses for illegal aliens.

Heck Romeny wasn't here with the first gays or peoples intent. People got married to have sex legally.....they got married for the children....they sold traded and barterd childrens lives for debts using marraige as the answer. Until there's some global understanding........some un-broken rule and standard.....what's a person to do?

I do not advocate "gayness"....but lord knows going "straight" hasn't been the answer either. If it wasn't a human frailty...then why laws to say not to? Even in the Bible. There are straight parents that should never be and gays where the kids would do better.

Compromise and flip-flop tactics will only dig a deeper hole. The issue of illegal immigration will be fought in the Congress, and Americans will have to keep all of their feet to the fire.

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of insidious forces from within." General Douglas MacArthur