Don Gorton

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Don Gorton (b. Belzoni, Mississippi 1960; Boston University 1982, Harvard Law '85) is a tax judge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who is at the center of a controversy involving former Governor Mitt Romney and same-sex marriage. In July 2006, Romney replaced Gorton, a long-serving commissioner on the Commonwealth's Appellate Tax Board (ATB), with Tom Mulhern. A high school graduate lacking a college degree let alone a law degree, Mulhern was a real estate appraiser with little experience in state tax cases. Gorton, the former head of the Greater Boston Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance and current co-chair for the Governor's Task Force on Hate Crimes, publicly stated that homophobia might be the reason for his removal as a tax judge. The other reason for Romney's action likely was an ethics complaint Gorton filed against Anne Foley, a Romney appointee who had subsequently stepped aside. [1]

1 Gay Marriage Controversy
2 Governor's Task Force on Hate Crime
3 The Past Elucidates the Present
4 Works
5 Cited in
6 References

[edit] Gay Marriage Controversy

The Commonwealth of Massachuestts became the first state to allow same-sex marriage in 2004, after the Superior Court struck down the gay marriage ban as unconstitutional. Marriage impacts literally thousands of federal and state tax laws, and with the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, tax cases involving same-sex couples were sure to be heard by the ATB. It was felt by many critics of Romney's move that replacing the experienced Gorton with an inexperienced real estate professional lacking not only a law degree and university education but any tax judge experience was an attempt by Romney to keep the ATB from ruling in favor of gay couples. Thus, without the gay Gorton on the board, it was more likely that the same rights enjoyed by straight married couples would not be extended to same-sex couples legally married in the Commonwealth.

Thus, to many critics of the governor's move, the replacement of Gorton as commissioner elucidated that Romney's homophobia went beyond mere posturing with the right-wing of the Republican Party and that he was genuinely anti-gay. Earlier, when same-sex marriage was legalized by the Massachusetts Superior Court, Romney had ordered town clerks not to issue marriage licenses to out-of-state couples seeking to be married in Massachusetts who did not intend to move to the Commonwealth. Romney based his order on a 1913 anti-miscegenation marriage law, Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 207, Section 11, designed to thwart the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Gorton appealed his dismissal from the ATB to the Governor's Council, a popularly-elected board which oversees judicial nominations. Gorton's term in office subsequently was extended so that he could finish adjudicating the scores of cases that he currently had under consideration, cases that the inexperienced Mulhern would not be able to handle in a timely fashion.

[edit] Governor's Task Force on Hate Crime

The Governor's Task Force on Hate Crime was an agency that linked representatives of the state police and local law enforcement agencies with community advocates to ensure the state government's commitment to eradicating bias-motivated crime in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Task Force, created in 1991 by then-Governor William Weld (who appointed Gorton co-chair), was given permanent status by former Governor Paul Cellucci in 1998.[2]

After Mitt Romney was inaugurated as the Commonwealth's 70th governor on January 2, 2003, the politician elected as a pro-choice, gay-friendly social moderate in the guise of liberal Republican William Weld began showing a pronounced anti-gay bias. In his first year in office, Romney vetoed a bill funding hate crimes prevention funding, after which he impounded money previously approved by former Governor Jane Swift for a bullying prevention program. The anti-bullying program was to be based on a book, "Direct from the Field: A Guide to Bullying Prevention", which the Task Force intended to publish and make available to communities to provide guidance on implementing bullying prevention programs in middle schools and high schools. The editor of the bullying prevention manuscript was Gorton, who recounted in 2006 how the guide was ready in 2003, but the $10,000 needed to publish it was not available. [3]

Romney's elimination of state funding for hate crime prevention resulted in the Task Force losing its staff. Gorton stayed on as co-chair of the now moribund Task Force and continued to nurse the anti-bullying project. The anti-bullying program continues to attract the ire of right-wing Christian activists, who attempt to equate it and its "author" with the old Anita Bryant-charge of "recruiting" and predatory sexual practices. [4] Gorton sees the attack on the Task Force and his subsequent dismissal as linked to Romney's Presidential ambitions, as he must appeal to right-wing Christian activists in order to win the Republican Party's Presidential nomination.

[edit] The Past Elucidates the Present

When Gorton attended Boston University as an undergraduate, he was involved in progressive student politics, serving as treasurer and later president of the College of Liberal Arts Forum, the elected student government representing 5,000 undergraduates. Part of the progressive agenda was to obtain a commitment from B.U. to eliminate discrimination based on sexual orientation/affectional preference from B.U., a position opposed by B.U. President John Silber. In 2002, the year before Romney quashed the Commonwealth of Massachusetts anti-hate crime and bullying prevention programs, the controversial Silber, who had run for governor in 1990 and been beaten by William Weld, ordered that a B.U.-affiliated high school academy disband its gay-straight alliance. The alliance was a student club that staged demonstrations against homophobia. Silber dismissed the stated purpose of the club, that of serving as a support group for gay students that also sought to promote tolerance and understanding between gay and straight students, and accused it of being a vehicle for "homosexual recruitment". At the time, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts funded gay-straight student clubs in 156 schools. The move was a controversial one and engendered a great deal of criticism from the gay, progressive communities, including public condemnation by U.S. Representative Barney Frank.

Ironically, Silber's own son had died of AIDS in 1996.[5] Though his son may have been gay, Silber may be in denial, as he said in a 1992 interview in Newsday, "Decent parents don't even discuss [with their children] the possibility that there are homosexuals." [6]

Ironically, in light of Governor Romney's use of the anti-interracial marriage 1913 law to strike at same-sex marriage, Don Gorton's hometown of Belzoni, Mississippi was the site of a notorious murder of an early civil rights pioneer. The Rev. George W. Lee, an African American minister who was seeking voting rights for the disenfranchised blacks of the Mississippi Delta, was murdered in 1955 in "Bloody Belzoni" by racists committed to upholding segregation. His killers were never found, as the governor of Mississippi, Hugh L. White, refused to investigate the case. [7] Many consider him the first martyr of the civil rights movement. It was a story the politically liberal Gorton had been told as a child and has never forgotten.