Mitt Romney Tries To Catch Up To Obama On LGBT Issues

"I can beat that guy.  Forget marriage.  I'll let gays adopt!"

It seems Mitt Romney is playing a little bit of catch-up with the president this week ever since Obama announced the completion of his "evolution" and his support of same-sex marriages.  First Romney took to the airwaves to reaffirm his belief that marriage is a sacred institution and only men and women should be married.  Romney even went as far as to say civil unions that offer the same rights as marriage would be unacceptable, but he did add that gays should be allowed to visit each other in the hospital should they get sick.  There is a comforting thought.

Now Mitt Romney dropped another LGBT gem in hopes of winning back the gay vote (like that was ever going to happen): Romney stated that gay couples should be allowed to adopt, but his coming out in favor of gay adoptions isn't really a big win for the governor but more like a condescending call for necessity.

"I happen to believe that the best setting for raising a child is where this is the opportunity to a mom and a dad to be in the home," Romney said to Fox's Neil Cavuto. "I know there are many circumstances where that is not possible, through death or divorce. I also know many gay couples are able to adopt children. That's fine."

“And that if two people of the same gender want to live together, want to have a loving relationship and even want to adopt a child, in my state individuals of the same sex were able to adopt children. In my view that’s something that people have the right to do, but to call that marriage is, in my view, a departure of the real meaning of that word.”

First, I find that his defense of marriage is disingenuous.  He talks about the "real" meaning of the word but when you attempt to give homosexual couples guarantees by another name - "civil union" - Romney still isn't happy.  That is probably because he feels his marriage to be watered down when others are allowed to enjoy the same rights granted to married heterosexuals.

Secondly, Romney still believes men and women together are best equipped to raise children, but when that fails, he thinks it is okay to go down the line and tap the last resort for child rearing: gays.  Romney doesn't believe gay couples should be on an equal footing with straight couples.

“We have to have a president who’s willing to say that the best opportunity an individual can give to their unborn child is an opportunity to be born in a home with a mother and a father,” Romney said at the CNN debate. “We battled, for instance, to help the Catholic Church stay in the adoption business. The amazing thing was that while the Catholic Church was responsible for half the adoptions in my state — half the adoptions — they had to get out of that business because the legislature wouldn’t support me and give them an exemption from having to place children in homes where there was a mom and a dad on a preferential basis.”

In the debate Romney lamented the fact that the Catholic Church could no longer conduct adoptions in Massachusetts because they wanted to give preferential treatment to straight couples.

Does that sound like someone who is interested in equal rights?