Edward Middlebrooks

Edwared Middlebrooks is an attorney and LGBT activist who lives and resides in the Boston, Mass. area--- and has and is active in the issues of gay rights and gay families for more than twenty years.

After the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2003, then-governor MittRomney thwarted efforts to change the birth certificate entry for “father” to “father or second parent,” requiring his lawyers to sign off on each individual birth certificate. Murray Waas reports that Romney’s effort to this effect – at the expense of gay parents and, especially their children, denied by Romney himself from having two parents on their birth certificates:

"The practice of requiring high-level legal review continued for the rest of Romney’s term, despite a warning from a Department of Public Health lawyer who said such a system placed the children of same-sex parents at an unfair disadvantage", Murray Waas also reported, Crossouts and handwritten alterations constituted “violations of existing statutes” and harmed “the integrity of the vital record-keeping system,” the deputy general counsel of the department.

The changes also would impair law enforcement and security efforts in a post-9/11 world, she said, and children with altered certificates would be likely to “encounter [difficulties] later in life . . . In short, Romney's actions have a tremendous impact on the children of gay parents.