Romney rips SJC's justices on values

WASHINGTON -- Governor Mitt Romney leveled an unusually personal attack yesterday at the Supreme Judicial Court for legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, telling a group of conservative lawyers and judges that the justices issued the ruling to promote their values and those of ''their like-minded friends in the communities they socialize in."

Though Romney has criticized the SJC's watershed 2003 decision many times before, the broadside he delivered at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C., was an atypically sharp and direct attack on the four justices who found that the Massachusetts Constitution afforded gays and lesbians the right to marry.

''If a judge substitutes his or her values for those values that were placed in the constitution, they do so at great peril to the culture of our entire land," he said.

The remarks won applause from the 500 lawyers, scholars, and others who packed a ballroom to hear Romney's speech.

But the comments did not sit well with some back in Massachusetts, who said Romney's remarks were politically motivated and unfair to the justices.

Romney also took heat yesterday when he did not swiftly disavow the remarks of Federalist Society member Gerald Walpin, who introduced Romney by praising him for fighting against what he called the ''modern-day KKK . . . the Kennedy-Kerry Klan."

''Today, when most of the country thinks of who controls Massachusetts, I think the modern-day KKK comes to mind, the Kennedy-Kerry Klan," Walpin, who sits on the society's board of visitors, said to hearty laughter. ''One person who has been victorious against that tide in Massachusetts is Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney."

Romney, along with members of the audience, laughed at the joke and later thanked Walpin for the ''very generous introduction." But later in the day, as Democrats got wind of Walpin's remark and began circulating it, Romney distanced himself from the joke and said it was wrong.

''I agree with the critics," Romney said in an interview with the Globe after a meeting on renewable energy with Gale A. Norton, the US secretary of the interior. ''It is ill-advised and inappropriate to raise the KKK even in a joke, and I think it was unfortunate."

Asked to respond to criticism from Democrats that he should have condemned the remark from the podium, Romney said, ''You know . . . I was trying to figure out what I was going to say" in the speech.

Less than four hours after the address, Romney met with Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry and the Coast Guard to discuss the future of the Otis Air National Guard Base, which lost missions under the Defense Department's recent round of base-closings. It's one of several recent issues on which Kennedy and the governor have worked closely.

Kerry spokesman David Wade said of the KKK joke: ''There's nothing funny about equating two devout Catholics with anti-Catholic bigots infamous for violence against African-Americans and Jews . . . days after America buried Rosa Parks. Apparently it's still standard fare at right-wing gatherings to make and accept intolerant remarks."

Kennedy's office declined to comment.

The president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP, Leonard C. Alkins, faulted Romney for not repudiating the comment right away. ''He is obviously running for higher office and didn't want to offend anyone, and shame on him for that," Alkins said when told about the remark.

Romney is considering a run for president in 2008. Along with White House adviser Karl Rove and Senator John Cornyn of Texas, he was one of the featured speakers at the three-day convention of the Federalist Society, an influential 35,000-member conservative legal group. Romney said he was asked by the society to talk about the gay marriage decision.

In the past, Romney has largely focused his criticism on the SJC decision itself, calling it an example of ''judicial overreaching" in an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal last year. He has also brought up gay marriage in out-of-state political speeches, once expressing surprise that married same-sex couples were having children.

In yesterday's address, he made a sweeping denunciation of the ruling and also the justices who issued it, weaving it into a broader warning about the challenges the nation faces culturally, economically, and militarily. Romney did not mention an SJC justice by name, but at several points he suggested they had based their decision on what they and their social circles believe.

''Our Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts, by a one-vote majority, found that in our constitution written over 200 years ago was a right for same-sex individuals to marry," the governor said.

''John Adams would be surprised," Romney said to laughs. ''Now my judicially, philosophically oriented liberal friends were happy, even celebratory. What's wrong, they say, with allowing judges to expand the constitution to do what they and other intelligent people think is the right thing to do? Well, the answer is there are a lot of things wrong with that."

A spokeswoman for the SJC declined to comment on Romney's speech. Chief Justice Margaret Marshall has complained in the past that attacks on ''judicial activism" undermine the independence of the judiciary.

''I think it's insulting to say that they made a decision based on their social circles," said Gary Buseck, legal director for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders. ''It seems to cheapen it to take it to the personal, that they were just trying to please their friends."

The legalization of same-sex marriage, Romney said, has created problems, as married gay couples have moved to other states and run into legal entanglements over issues such as divorce and child custody.

He urged the SJC to uphold a 1913 law, currently being challenged, that prevents Massachusetts from granting marriage licenses to out-of-state couples whose unions would not be recognized by their home state.

The SJC, Romney said, had a choice between ''the law or . . . the social proclivities of the community of thought [with] which the court associates."

''Will be it the law, or will it be social congratulations?," he said.

Romney ended his speech by praising the new chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, and President Bush's current pick to replace outgoing Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Several Federalist Society members said afterward that they were impressed by what they heard from Romney. ''I think he said the right thing: Decisions should be left to the people," said Peter Urbanowicz, a Dallas lawyer.

Bob Eitel, a lawyer from Louisiana currently living in Alexandria, Va., said he saw Romney as presidential material and said the gay-marriage decision wouldn't hurt him in the primaries because he's fought it the right way.

''He has handled that situation as well as he could have," Eitel said.

Ralph Ranalli of the Globe staff contributed to this report; Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.