It’s good to see this effort by Courage Campaign Super PAC and American Bridge 21st Century – an outline in personal testimonies of how life under Mitt Romney will be an exercise in trying to hold onto the meager LGBT equality gains that have been made while fighting off clear attempts to ensure institutionalized bigotry remains in place if he lands in the White House. “Mitt Gets Worse” is a play on Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project.  Here’s the “welcome” kickoff:

Romney has earned a reputation as a flip-flopper — changing his positions in whatever direction advances his career. But when it comes to LGBT issues, there’s one thing you can always count on: Mitt Gets Worse.

Year after year, Mitt has moved further and further toward the extreme right. The Mitt Gets Worse campaign is an oral history of Mitt Romney’s efforts to diminish the rights and the freedoms of LGBT Americans, told by supporters, activists, and LGBT advocates that have personally been impacted by Mitt’s anti-equality agenda.

Over the next few weeks, the campaign will be releasing first person accounts of LGBT activists and organizers who have played key roles in this fight.

More from the Boston Globe’s coverage on why this campaign is needed – Romney’s public squishiness on the issue is not an indication that he would be a benign force re: LGBT issues if elected.

“Even if he is tailoring his rhetoric to appeal to conservatives, there is no reason to believe he wouldn’t continue to kowtow to conservatives as president,” said David Brock, founder of American Bridge 21st Century.

“Romney seems to be able to say whatever is appropriate to get elected,” added Courage Campaign Founder Rick Jacobs. “He doesn’t seem to believe in much of anything, except that he doesn’t seem to like LGBT people.”

Here are a couple of the video testimonies from the Mitt Gets Worse site:


Julie Goodridge was a lead plaintiff in Goodridge v. Dept of Public Health — the lawsuit that brought same-sex marriage to Massachusetts. In this video, Goodridge shares her family’s encounters with Gov. Mitt Romney, including a meeting with Romney, which Goodridge describes as “the most frustrating experience in the entire marriage case.”

The Courage Campaign’s Adam Bink:


Adam Bink is Director of Online Programs at Courage Campaign, an online organizing network that empowers more than 750,000 grassroots and netroots activists to push for progressive change and full equality in California and across the country. He worked as an organizer to help defeat a proposed constitutional amendment that would have overturned the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.