As Governor, Romney Rejected New Birth Certificates For Gay Parents

When gay marriage was legalized in 2003, forms for birth certificates had to be changed, but Governor Romney rejected a plan by the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics to relabel a box for “father” to read “father or second parent.”

Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink.

Divisions between the governor’s office and state bureaucrats over the language on the forms and details about the extraordinary effort by the Republican governor to prevent routine recording of births to gay parents are contained in state records obtained by the Globe this month.

Deliberations about the policies, including dozens of exchanges about the marriages and births of individual families, are recounted in e-mails and legal memos sent between the governor’s office and lawyers at the Department of Public Health, which oversees the Registry of Vital Records . . .

Romney’s insistence on scrutiny harmed the ‘integrity of the vital record-keeping system,’ one official said.

The practice of requiring high-level legal review continued for the rest of Romney’s term, despite a warning from a Department of Public Health lawyer who said such a system placed the children of same-sex parents at an unfair disadvantage.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.