1994: Mitt Romney tells the Log Cabin Republicans he supports ENDA, ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, and will be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy.
2009: Mitt Romney tells CNN there should be a national standard against gay marriage.
Mitt Romney has earned a well-deserved reputation as a flip-flopper -- changing his positions in whatever direction advances his career. But when it comes to LGBT issues, there's one thing you can always count on: Mitt Gets Worse. Year after year, Mitt has moved further and further toward the extreme right.
That's why we are launching the Mitt Gets Worse campaign. It's an oral history of Mitt Romney's efforts to diminish the equality and freedom of LGBT Americans, told by people who have been personally impacted by Mitt's anti-equality agenda. Over the next few weeks, the campaign will release first person accounts of LGBT activists and organizers who have played key roles in this fight, especially in Massachusetts where Governor Romney got worse. And worse. You can see the first video here.
Mitt's extreme positions are even out of touch with his own party. I read with great interest this week a piece in the Los Angeles Times, written by the right-leaning CATO institute, that stated, "To be sure, anti-gay sentiments still run deep in the GOP. Yet if one digs deeper than the conventional wisdom, one finds large, overlooked pockets of gay tolerance among rank-and-file Republicans." The piece goes on to site polling data from May 2011 showing a majority of Republicans -- 51 percent -- in favor of either same-sex marriage or civil unions. Other polling has shown a similar result -- a majority of Republicans favor legal recognition of gay couples.
The piece concludes with a sentiment that has been shared by many keen political observers within the Republican Party -- most prominently former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman -- that Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans would be smart to heed the shifting demographics on this issue.
Even right-wing hedge fund manager Paul Singer, one of the largest donors to Republican causes, that he has established a new Super PAC to support Republican candidates who support full LGBT equality.
Indeed, the larger question for voters is precisely which Mitt we'd get in the White House. Would it be the Mitt that said he'd be better for LGBT people and then got so bad that his how base rejects his positions?
Unfortunately for millions of LGBT people in this country, we know the Mitt we'll get. He's the Mitt that is moving in the wrong direction (as our Facebook Timeline shows) away from history, not towards it. For millions like us, Mitt Gets Worse. And if elected, the country will get worse.
Recently, while speaking to the NAACP convention in Texas, Mitt said he would represent "all Americans of every race, creed and sexual orientation." That may have been true in 1994 but clearly it is not true today.