as Mitt Romney has received plenty of plaudits for his takeover of the 2002 Winter Olympics, after the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) became mired in a major bribery scandal. But there's one accomplishment from his time in Salt Lake City that has been largely omitted from the oft-told narrative of his Olympic effort: Romney's success in making the 2002 Winter Olympics one of the most gay-friendly games in Olympic history.The achievement gets barely a mention in Romney's 2004 book, Turnaround, about his role rescuing the Salt Lake Olympics. Despite the urging of a close associate at SLOC, who suggested that Romney spotlight the committee's work to make the games gay-friendly, the then-Massachusetts governor wrote just three sentences about his pro-gay diversity efforts. But the little-known chapter in the story of Romney's Olympic leadership illustrates how much the GOP presidential candidate has backtracked on gay and lesbian issues since 1994, when he promised tobe better on gay rights than his then-opponent for the US Senate, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).When Romney first took the helm of the SLOC, the organization wasn't known for being inclusive to minority groups of any sort, much less gays and lesbians. Of the 55 members of the SLOC's board of trustees, 40 were men and 48 were white. Likewise, the staff of the SLOC was 93 percent white and 53 percent male. Former Olympic biathlete and board of trustees member Joan Guetschowrecalls her first board meeting, when Romney was introduced to the board as "Brother Romney" by the other Mormon members of the board, who then invited new board members to stand up and introduce their "wives."Guetschow attended the event with Olympic skeleton racer Tricia Stumpf, to whom she is now married. She was uncomfortable "introducing 'my wife' to what appears to be a very homogenous group of primarily white guys," so she introduced Stumpf as "my friend," and then joked, "That's a safe way to put it." Members of the board "were stone-faced," Guetschow says.Later during Romney's tenure, after some embarrassing media criticism and internal pressure from Lillian Taylor, one of the few African Americans on the board of trustees, the SLOC attempted to diversify the workforce.
sounds like had it not been for Joan Guetschow and Lillian Taylor there may have been prejudiced exclusions in Romney's Olympic effort to form his committee, must have been when he was against them before he was reluctantly for them, so called minorities now majorities and Gay ans Lesbians, more of a spirit of Romneys beliefs and religion then an every 4 year competition of worldwide athlete's. wonder how hard it was for him to bend?
wonder why in light of the Pres.'s Gay Rights bill, would his party feel it best not to let that information out to "we the people" seems it would be a plus and maybe sway some votes. or he did not want that display albeit probably with great distress he was responsible for embracing the Gay people and including them in his "committee".
