A 1960 Question.

I saw this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog last week and have been meaning to pass it along. It concerns an interview with a Mormon feminist (which seems to me to be a contradiction in terms) named Judy Dushku. She relates her personal experience with the Republican nominee for President of the United States, which took place when Mr. Romney was running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994.

When I entered the office, there was a table to my right where I saw women from the ward working. I said, “Hi,” and he asked, “What brings you here?” I told him I was interested in politics, that I heard he was taking a pro-choice stance [in his Senate race], and that I was wondering if, as a Democrat and fellow Mormon, maybe I could work for him…. “Yes, I’m definitely for choice,” he said. And I said, “Great, we agree on that.” Then, he said, “In Salt Lake, they told me it was okay to take that position in a liberal state.”

I said, “That doesn’t make me quite as happy. I’d rather know you really believe it….” And that’s why I continued to try to understand his point on the issue. I asked, “What about women who might be on public assistance?” He said, “I would never have the state provide for abortion.” I said, “For a lot of Massachusetts women that won’t work.” He got very restless and stood up and said, “I am pro-choice; is there something else?” […]

I’ve told reporters [looking for “the dirt” on Romney] they were barking up the wrong tree. Mitt is a loyal husband, and he is conscientious. But he is incredibly entitled and feels like his story is the most important. If you were ever at a ward party and sat down with your plate of food and found yourself at a table with Mitt and five other men, you would just expect that you wouldn’t be in the conversation. No one was particularly unkind, but there was an in-group made of up those who were in the circle of male leaders—many Harvard Business School types—and their wives. I was spouseless, and I didn’t live in Belmont, but Watertown, which is economically less privileged. I tried and always came to church, but it was often awkward….. [Referring to interviews she gave about Romney’s abortion stance during his Senate run,] it was not that I had specific horrible stories to tell, it was that I felt people should know that he was not a caring man, particularly when it came to women. He once said to me, “Judy, I don’t know why you keep coming to church. You are not my kind of Mormon.”

First, with respect to the title of this post “A 1960 Question.” In 1960, one of the issues that then Senator John F. Kennedy had to grapple with the religion question, and he handled quite correctly:

This is one of the great defenses of what our Founding Fathers built: a unscaleable wall of separation between Church and State. The suspicion of Kennedy or any Catholic in 1960 and before was that such a Catholic President would take instruction on policy from the Pope. Kennedy rightly rejected that notion and governed accordingly. What Mitt Romney is admitting here is that he is taking instruction from Salt Lake on what issues he can take and policies he can pursue.

And then there is his dismissal of Judy as not his kind of Mormon. That is rather omnimous. I wonder what he thinks of non-Mormons.

Second, and perhaps as important from these quotes is Romney’s “disinterest and a certain attitude toward frivolousness of women’s issues.” Romney is obviously from the brand of Mormonism that views women as servants rather than as equals, and thus he treats women’s issues with the same level of disdain that a wealthy mogul would treat a servant.