WILLARD ROMNEY: Bully Then, Bully Now.

SUMMARY: Mitt Romney’s bullying, homophobic past has apparently caught up with him.  As a student at Michigan’s Cranbrook school, he and a group of co-conspirators attacked and forcibly administered a haircut to a fellow student whom they perceived to be gay.  Not surprisingly, Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, abolished a state commission set up to confront the bullying of queer youth in the Commonwealth.  Some things never change, and in Romney’s case, once a bully, always a bully.  That’s not an example we can afford to follow in Cathedral City.

By: Paul S. Marchand

Being bullied isn’t only no fun, it is also an experience that can come close --- even if only psychologically --- to being raped. 

It hurts.

Worse than anyone who has never been bullied can ever imagine.

The news cycle yesterday was dominated by revelations that as an 18 year old student at the Cranbrook School, a private Michigan boys’ school, Mitt Romney was the ringleader of a “posse,” or more properly a gang, of students who had targeted a younger boy for a bullying attack that, like so many bullying attacks, came close --in a psychological, if not a legal, sense--  to rape.

According to the Washington Post, Romney led a group of fellow students down a corridor in a residence hall of that upsale boys’ school to the room of a student who had apparently returned from spring break with a bleached blond hairdo and what my generation might call a “Flock of Seagulls” flap of hair down over one eye.  While his co-conspirators held the boy down, and the victim called for help as his eyes filled with tears, Romney cut off the boy’s hair, lock by lock.

For any of us who have ever been the target of bullying, the account of what happened hits us in the gut.

Like many queer boys and girls, I know what it is like to have been bullied.  I know what it is like to live with the fear of one’s perceived sexuality being used as a justification for bullying.  

So, I have little sympathy for defenders of Mitt Romney who claim that he “was just a kid,” who deserves the benefit of the doubt because he was still in high school.

Bullshit.

At eighteen, one can:

• Enlist in the Armed Forces, be shipped overseas, bear arms for, and possibly die, for this country;
• Enter into binding contracts;
• Marry; and
• Be charged and tried as an adult for crimes, including the crime of assault and battery which Romney and his co-conspirators apparently committed against their victim.

By the time I myself turned eighteen, I had already begun to come to terms with the reality of being queer, with what that meant at the beginning of the 1980s, and what my queerness consequently cost me.  I walked away from the opportunity for a full ride Navy ROTC scholarship because I was afraid of falling afoul of the so-called 123 Words –- the Reagan Administration prohibition on service in the armed forces by LGBT people.  My country bullied me, and I carry the hurt to this day.

So, when I heard about what Mitt Romney had done, all the old hurt came back to my memory.  For in truth, bullies don’t often change.  A President of the United States can evolve --- and has evolved --- on the issue of marriage equality; after all, most Americans have evolved with Barack Obama on marriage equality.  Bullies, on the other hand, don’t often have “Road to Damascus” experiences that change their perspective.

Unfortunately, Mitt Romney seems to have been too entitled ever to understand that being a bully represents one of the worst aspects of human nature.  This is, after all, the same man who as governor of Massachusetts abolished the Commonwealth’s state commission that had been tasked with helping LGBT young people at risk for suicide and bullying.

Apparently, to Mitt Romney, queer youth in Massachusetts were no more deserving of consideration and respect than the queer kid at the Cranbrook School whom he and his co-conspirators thought it was okay to torment, and upon whom they inflicted what amounts to the psychological equivalent of rape.

I suppose that what angers me so much about the revelations of the Willard Romney’s behavior is that, even now, he doesn’t get it.  He doesn’t seem to understand that queer kids are still being bullied, are still being victimized, marginalized, and told that their lives don’t matter.  I would be curious to know if Willard Romney has the slightest idea of how many queer kids have taken their own lives in the twelvemonth last past.

Does he have any clue what it’s like to wake up every day wondering whether you can get through that day without being beaten up, made fun of, or having somebody in one of your classes yell “attagirl” every time you open your mouth to speak, as he used to do at Cranbrook?

I don't think he does.

Here in Cathedral city, we know what it’s like when kids get bullied.  Whether it’s the emo kids, the tomboys, the Goths, or just the kids who are in some way a little bit different, bullying doesn’t just affect the immediate target, it affects his or her family and friends as well.

So I wonder, what can Mitt Romney say to the queer kid at Cathedral City High School?  What can Mitt Romney say to a kid over at Mt. San Jacinto Continuation School?  What can Mitt Romney say to the middle schooler who may be uncertain about her or his own sexuality?

Not much.

Some bullies are so because they are fearful of something within themselves that they dare not face, let alone admit.  Other bullies, like Mitt Romney, act out of a sense of sheer entitlement.  As the son of the governor of Michigan, Mitt Romney never needed to worry that he might be called to account for actions which we today would consider criminal.

And we should consider bullying criminal.  When a teenage girl slits her wrists in the bathtub, or boy hangs himself in his bedroom because she or he can no longer bear to be bullied, something is wrong.

Perhaps we have been lucky in Cathedral City that we have been spared the horror of a young person taking his or her own life because of bullying.  Nonetheless, we dare not indulge in the feckless luxury of believing that to close it has not happened here it cannot happen here.

Because it can.  And because it can, we who have survived the experience of being bullied need to rally to our at risk youth, letting them know that it in fact does get better.

Without intending to, Willard Mitt Romney has managed to make bullying a part not merely of our national conversation, but of our Cathedral City conversation as well.  In a community as small as this one, we do not have the luxury of either tolerating bullying or of ignoring its existence.

Now is the time, thanks to what we now know about Mitt Romney’s behavior, to take a stand here, in the most richly diverse community in the Coachella Valley, for all of our young people, irrespective of their race, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or immigration status.  

To the extent that we do not have a single person to waste, all of us --- from the Mayor and City Council (and candidates for those offices) on down through every citizen--- need to take a stand against the kind of bullying that, unfortunately, Mitt Romney seems to embody, exemplify, and personify.

We owe it to our kids.

-xxx-

Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated.  They are not intended to be, and should not be construed as, legal advice.  He is tired of bullies.