In another incident Romney threatened Peggy Hayes, a divorced single woman, with excommunication when she resisted his orders to give her infant son up for adoption to an LDS adoption agency.

 "He told me he was a representative of the church and by refusing, I was failing to comply with the church's wishes and I could be excommunicated."

Hayes took Romney's admonition as a threat. She felt attacked, even intimidated. Moreover, it was insulting: "He was saying that because Dane [her son] didn't have a Mormon father in the home and because of the circumstances of his birth--being born to a single mother--then the expectation of the church was that I give him up for adoption to the church agency so he could be raised by a Mormon couple in good standing."

This case has a secondary racial angle as Mitt Romney showed no similar concern for her young African American daughter.

Judith Dushku, a Mormon, associate professor of government of Sufolk University and friend of Sheldon says:

"He can seem very distant, unattached at times, almost heartless," ...
"Romney just doesn't have any sensitivity to women's issues in general," says Dushku. "But even more than that, he genuinely believes he's always right, that he's never made a mistake. He can never say, 'I might have made a mistake, I didn't understand that.' In Mitt's view, no one else has anything else to offer. He's always right." ...

"He's not a man who has anything like a moral core," she says. "He's very loyal to the Mormon church, pays his tithing, is faithful to his wife, and so on, but he doesn't have a set of core values you can count on. I've known him for nearly 40 years. He may have a different suit on, but he hasn't changed. His experience hasn't changed. His performance was very consistent with the Mitt I knew back then. He can't relate to average working women--teachers and nurses and care givers. He's still coming from a place of privilege and entitlement."

This article is an excerpt of Geoffry Dunn's new book, "The Book of Romney: The Republican Presidential Candidate's Problem with Women." If these allegations hold up and get attention from the traditional media before the election they seem to have potential to impact the election as they reinforce the concern many voters already sense that Mitt Romney lacks sufficient empathy to be President of the United States, and also that he is a bully with little respect for women and those he considers to be weak  or "inferior."

12:58 PM PT:  Thanks to reid fan for this correction, information about previous reports on these stories, and a link to a Vanity Fair article from February that I will get the source code for in a minute.

 

not: "Church of Latter-day Saints"

should be: "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"

The story was reported on by Vanity Fair in February of this year, picking up on the original published report in the Exponent II, a publication put out by Mormon women who are feminists. The Exponent II article was published in 1990. You should give some props to these sources, especially since your title "emerges" makes it sound like this was original research by Geoffrey Dunn.

Fun fact: Judith Dushku is the mother of Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Eliza Dushku (she played the character Faith).

The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. --Calvin & Hobbes

by reid fan on Thu Oct 11, 2012 at 11:13:30 AM PDT

1:17 PM PT:  Here the link to the Vanity Fair article recommend by reid fan in the previous update.

The Meaning of Mitt by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman