FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Corri Planck
(323) 848-8804
(202) 487-5778 (cell)
June 17, 2005 – WASHINGTON, DC – Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Pride Coalition, today invited Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to attend the group’s annual Family Week event in Provincetown, Mass. Family Pride is the only national organization exclusively dedicated to securing equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) parents and their families.
Gov. Romney yesterday announced his endorsement of a grassroots effort in Massachusetts to pass a ban on same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2008. He had previously stated his support for a compromise measure that would ban marriage, but provide civil unions for same-sex couples.
According to an article in today’s Boston Globe, Romney has again aligned himself with bishops from the Roman Catholic Church, who issued a statement yesterday that said, in part, “To remain effective as society’s primary institution for ensuring the well-being of children, marriage must be understood by government as a commitment involving one man and one woman.”
“Using children to argue against providing legal protections for families has now become an old trick,” Chrisler said. “All the leading child welfare organizations have supported LGBT parents, and know that children are best served when they have a safe, stable and predictable home life with loving and caring parents. Our families provide that.”
In response, Chrisler has issued an invitation to Gov. Romney’s office to attend Family Pride’s 10th annual Family Week in Provincetown, Mass. July 31-Aug. 6, encouraging the Governor to spend time with the families this effort would attack.
“If the Governor is going to use our families as a political football, he should come and meet families from Massachusetts and all over the country who need the full legal protections that come with marriage,” said Chrisler, who is the mother of two children and was legally married in Massachusetts. “We, too, want to ensure the well-being of our children, but politically-motivated attacks of this sort undermine our ability to legally protect our children. The largest gathering of LGBT parents and their families happens in Massachusetts, and we invite Gov. Romney to come and see the reality of our families, and hear from families who would be harmed by his efforts.
Among the child welfare organizations have supported joint and/or second-parent adoptions by same-sex couples, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, Child Welfare League of America, North American Council on Adoptable Children, American Psychological Association, American Bar Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
The Family Pride Coalition is the only national not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to securing equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents and their families.