When I was a child, the etch-a-sketch was one of my favorite toys.  Framed in red,  it had an impressive screen where one could draw all sorts of fanciful things with the two left and right knobs at the bottom of the unit.  If, after a while of constructing a God-awful mess, shake, shake, shake… and the whole thing was gone.  Forgotten,  As if it did not exist.

The Republican campaign this year was a human compassion horror show.  From the war on women , to immigration, to amnesia that we have troops around the world in harms way, to the war on LGBT families… Republican callousness has trampled the American people for a year and a half.  As I said in another blog piece, the Republican “ gay attack in particular includes (but is not limited to) heinous bullying by Rick Santorum,the ex-gay therapy practices of Michelle Bachmann’s husband, cocky anti-gay ads by Rick Perry,Mitt Romney’s attack on the children of gay families, the completely unforgivable silence of the whole dais of Republican presidential candidates when gay soldier Steve Snyder-Hill was booed by an audience of Republicans and the gay-civil-rights-attacking Republican Party Platform.”

The benefactor of this attack and chief proponent rising out of the steam was….. Mitt Romney.  During it all, he was not a blithe bystander… from his financing of the anti-gay Propostion 8 campaign in California, to signing a pledge to make same sex marriage forbidden by the US Constitution, to his cavalier disregard to gay veterans from both Viet Nam and Afghanistan,  Mitt Romney made it clear that gay Americans were not worthy of simple decency.

Romney’s utter disregard has not been hidden, nor have any around him feared that saner heads than the rabid Tea Party base might have an issue with it.  As his communication director, Eric Fehrnstrom put it,  “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.”

Romney could say moronic and evil things… and people would just…forget.

So hear we are… at the end of the campaign and we are on the brink of finding out whether Fehrnstrom’s assessment is correct.  Do reasonable people just forget?   Do they believe Romney when he claims that he is for 100% of us?

At the Republican convention, in her speech, Ann Romeny said, “ Tonight I want to talk to you about love… the single dad who’s working extra hours tonight, so that his kids can buy some new clothes to go back to school, can take a school trip or play a sport, so his kids can feel… like the other kids.”

I am a single dad.  But…. I am gay.   I KNOW that Ann Romney was not talking about me.   I know that she does not care about MY kids, and that they have greater needs than new clothes.  I KNOW that she and her husband do not care what kind of family stability, or protections my kids, and kids in families like ours could have, but that the Romneys will fight from allowing.

To the Romneys, gay families are nuisances that they want to shake, shake, shake away.  Part of the screen that can become clear and non-existant, so that they can pretend that they “care” about the America  they see….100%.

They want to etch-a-sketch my family, our gay heroes, our community… away.

That’s OK.  Next Tuesday, I want to do the same to them.  Please help me.  Shake, shake, shake…etch a sketch.  With all your might.

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