I understand that Mitt Romney needs the occasional applause line, but has he really thought this one through?
Romney offered a big-picture agenda for his party, from fighting Islamic jihadists to controlling spending to preparing for the coming economic competition with India and China. But he won his biggest applause when he condemned the decision by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts allowing same-sex marriages. "Every child in America has a right to a mother and a father," he said.
That's going to be a tricky right to legislate, I fear. Had Romney just pandered with an easy "should have a mother and father," there'd be no problem. But when you utter the word "rights," you enter the language of guarantees, and when a presidential candidate starts making guarantees, he's generally got a fix in mind. All of which is to say, I'm sure looking forward to the Romney campaign's white paper on appropriating fathers in order to ensure children's rights. I don't much see how it'll work, though, if Romney keeps up his ill-advised opposition to human cloning.
