FIC Blog

We expect it from left wing bloggers or the Courant’s Susan Campbell. But Chris Powell? Below is the letter I submitted to the Manchester Journal Inquirer on April 30th, which the JI published yesterday:

Chris Powell should check his facts before defaming the one group that shares his concern for “arresting the breakdown of the family” in Connecticut.

In “Break the vicious cycle: Take the children away” (April 5-6 column), Powell rightly connects the public coddling of unwed motherhood and fatherlessness with the emergence of violent predators — but then adds that “the organization whose name contemplates the problem, the Family Institute of Connecticut, is devoted instead to the irrelevance of disparaging homosexuals.”

FIC has always shared Powell’s concern about reversing family decline. In a Dec. 5, 2005, blog on our Web site, we highlighted a Powell column on the same topic and praised his willingness to see through politicians’ clichés about “more job training programs, more after-school activities,” to the real cause of the problem: childbearing outside of marriage.

FIC’s concern for “arresting the breakdown of the family” took concrete form this year in SB 266, An Act Establishing a Task Force to Study the Causes of Fatherlessness in Connecticut, which would “examine the impact of public policies in promoting fatherhood versus fatherlessness and shall consider how subsidized programs operate to encourage or discourage childbearing outside of marriage.”

Working with Sen. Gary LeBeau — an East Hartford Democrat who disagrees with us on same-sex marriage but shares our concern about fatherlessness — I testified in favor of SB 266. It was subsequently passed by three committees. On April 23 the state Senate — which let the bill die last year — passed it unanimously.

Why the big turnaround in the Senate? It was due in large part to lobbying by the Family Institute of Connecticut Action and hundreds of our members who contacted their legislators at our urging. Instead of disparaging the one group that shares his concern for reversing unwed motherhood and is putting that concern into action, Powell should help us get this task force.

These are just a few of the things Powell should have been able to discover before making his silly accusation.

For instance, he might have been interested in the meeting I had earlier this year with Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein. According to a Nov. 21, 2007, Hartford Courant article, following a series of murders of toddlers — allegedly by their mothers’ boyfriends — Milstein intended to ask the state’s Child Fatality Review Board to probe the issue of whether cohabitation is bad for children.

It will probably not surprise Powell that Milstein told me the Courant misreported her intention. But, again, FIC is the only group I know of that would even follow up on a report that the state’s child advocate was looking into the negative effects of cohabitation on children.

Powell objects to how unwed mothers are “aggressively shielded against any judgment” but “instead are affirmed.”

I know what he means. When the Courant ran a Jan. 28, 2007, story, “Unwed and Unashamed,” promoting local television celebrity — and single mom — Shelly Sindland, FIC was the only group to criticize it, noting on our Web site that “most women do not have the financial and other resources celebrities do to protect themselves and their children from the (negative) statistics associated with single motherhood.”

But, even leaving aside our desire to discourage abortions, returning the social stigma to unwed motherhood is an enormously difficult task — and Powell’s own column inadvertently demonstrates why.

FIC has gone to great lengths over the years to make arguments against same-sex marriage — facts about the best interests of children, the societal purposes of marriage, the consequences for religious liberty and parental rights — that have nothing to do with homosexuality. For our efforts, we are rewarded with Powell’s ignorant assertion that FIC is “devoted” to “disparaging homosexuals.”

The charitable assumption is that Powell is misinformed about FIC. Our opponents, on the other hand, deliberately equate any opposition to same-sex marriage with gay-bashing as a way of shouting down disagreement. What the demagogues have done on same-sex marriage they will surely do to efforts to restore a social stigma to out-of-wedlock parenting. After all, look how easy it was to fool Chris Powell.

Any day now the Connecticut Supreme Court could be issuing a ruling imposing same-sex “marriage” by judicial fiat…despite the fact that it has been repeatedly defeated at the state legislature. FIC supports a constitutional convention and right of initiative law to stop the Left’s constant efforts to usurp democracy. The right of intiative is a concept that may enjoy broad support, as this May 4th Courant op-ed by former Democratic state representative John Woodcock shows:

We often read of public opinion polls giving poor ratings to President Bush and Congress. No such poll has been taken regarding the Connecticut General Assembly and state government, but suffice it to say they would probably not fare well in such a poll of Connecticut citizens.

What is affecting the citizenry’s opinion of its state government? Is it citizen apathy, poor job performance, voter fatigue, or the myriad important issues such as escalating electric rates and public safety tragedies?

I believe that Connecticut citizens have the will and interest to stimulate and invigorate their government and make it more responsive to their concerns and their needs.

Just 26 years ago, Connecticut consumers deluged the state Capitol with their support of Connecticut’s first-in-the-nation Lemon Law. In the age before the Internet, they attended public hearings, held rallies, wrote thousands of letters and even flew an airplane over the Capitol with a banner expressing support of the pending law.

He might have added that just 5 years ago pro-family state residents deluged the state Capitol with 70,000 signatures to defend marriage, just 4 years ago 6,000 rallied in Hartford to protect marriage and just 3 years ago the Capitol was inundated with so many phone calls against the same-sex civil union bill that we shut down their switchboards. The civil union bill passed anyway…thus illustrating the problem raised by Woodcock and the need for the solution he recommends:

Today more than ever, Connecticut’s government desperately needs an injection of citizen input. Our legislature has become an isolated “Incumbent Nation.” The past dozen legislative election results illustrate this clearly.

If Connecticut’s leaders want to change the political environment of non-inclusiveness, they should offer and support citizen empowerment laws that promote democracy and citizen participation. These laws have been around for a long time and have been legislated by many states across the country…

A direct initiative law allows citizens to place a public policy issue on the ballot with no legislative approval needed. At least 26 states have these referendum laws available to their citizens, and more than 25 states provide for initiatives from their citizens.

Woodcock does not mention it, but there will automatically be a question on the ballot this November asking CT voters if they want to hold a state constitutional convention. Getting a “yes” vote on that question–which only appears once every 20 years–may be our best chance for getting the direct initiative law Woodcock supports. His own op-ed explains well why a “yes” vote–and a right of initiative–is so greatly needed:

Collectively, these reform proposals, tried and proved in other states, offer Connecticut citizens much-needed citizen rights. To become law, these reforms would have to be initiated and approved by the legislature, which has historically given them a very cold shoulder.

Perhaps the time is now, in this historic presidential election year, that we seek out and elect legislators who will advocate and work for the passage of laws that will strengthen Connecticut’s democracy and empower its citizens.

A likely Court-ordered imposition of same-sex “marriage” is another reason “to seek out and elect legislators” who will support the right of Connecticut citizens to be a self-governing people.

The lead op-ed on the front page of the Courant’s April 27th Sunday Commentary section was, of course, yet another article for same-sex “marriage“:

Their anecdotes revealed common problems. For example, same-sex couples are often denied health benefits because of a provision in the federal Defense of Marriage Act. In numerous situations, hospital or social services personnel either don’t know that they should — or simply refuse to — provide important information or assistance to a spouse in a civil union.

Even before the passage of civil unions, there were remedies for these situations that did not require a redefinition of marriage (a proxy for Mayor Perez admitted as much during his testimony before the judiciary committee last year). And passing same-sex “marriage” in Connecticut will not get same-sex couples “rights” they do not already have. More:

Based on the way I read the Bible — which may not be the way other Christians read it — I could not accept a same-sex couple as being married in the eyes of God. But the Bible also tells me not to mix religion and government. Matthew 22:21 says: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

But this is begging the question. Whether opposition to same-sex ”marriage” amounts to nothing more than a desire “to mix religion and government” is precisely a point upon which the two sides in this debate disagree. By arguing this way the author will win kudos from like-minded supporters who consider themselves similarly “enlightened” but he won’t persuade a single opponent. Was this silly syndicated piece the best pro same-sex “marriage” op-ed the Courant could find?

For government, marriage represents a contract between two adults who have agreed to share a household and attendant responsibilities. There’s nothing particularly holy about having a justice of the peace in a courthouse tie the knot. It’s a legal proceeding that’s called marriage.

Actually, for government, marriage is a way of increasing the liklihood that its citizens will be born into natural, stable environments and grow up to be productive members of society. That’s why tampering with the key institution connecting sex, procreation and child rearing is a bad thing to do.

Neither I nor my church would recognize them as married under God, but they don’t care about us. They care about getting the taxation, insurance and government services benefits of being a legal pair.

Oh, good. If that’s all pro same-sex “marriage” activists care about, they can end their campaign in Connecticut…since changing the definition of marriage in our state will not alter their ability to get any of those things.

The op-ed appearing in the Apr. 27th Courant is by an editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where it first appeared. Perhaps it is harder for the Courant to obtain the right to run pro-family op-eds from other newspapers and that is why we have seen so few in its pages. But, somehow, I doubt it. 

It’s also said that gay marriage will eventually lead to polygamy and worse. This argument is without even the barest shred of merit.

–Genghis Conn on CT Local Politics, March 20, 2007

That didn’t take long. Barely a year after our opponents’ failed attempt to shout down the obvious truth that same-sex marriage could lead to polygamy, Connecticut’s most influential newspaper–and a strong supporter of same-sex marriage–is running a story promoting “polyamory.” From “One Woman, Many Beds,” a story in today’s Courant:

But Robyn Trask, executive director of Loving More, a Boulder, Colo.-based group, believes it is unfortunate that the public often doesn’t hear about what she believes are the positive aspects to having more than one partner.

While polygamy involves having more than one spouse, Trask’s group, which has 1,500 active members, including some in Connecticut, supports polyamory: having multiple loves of either sex with or without marriage.

Trask’s organization publishes Loving More Magazine and runs conferences and retreats that address topics that naturally arise, such as jealousy and envy, and provides support and education for people who wish to have “poly” lives.

Trask herself has practiced polyamory for 18 years and has three children. She has one primary relationship now with a man in Colorado and secondary relationships with a man in New York and another in Hong Kong, each of whom have relationships with others.

The Courant does not cite a single source critical of polyamory or the harm it can do to children. Instead, we get a firsthand account of the supposed strengths of the “multi-partner lifestyle”…though a careful reading of the Q and A suggests it’s not all it’s cracked up to be:

Q:So eventually you found polyamory?

A: We started going to [polyamorist] groups. In ‘99, we started a support group. … It was a coed support group put together by myself and my husband.

My husband started a relationship with a woman. I got involved; we had a triad. The three of us were involved. That was a total surprise. At the same time, I was also dating another man who was living with a woman. She was involved with another man.

Q:Was your marriage working?

A: I am actually now divorced. My husband and I split last year, pretty amicably. I’m now involved with somebody else who helps me run Loving More.

No doubt the same folks who were outraged by the same-sex marriage/polygamy connection will deny that this article lends credence to our argument. We can already imagine their weak attempts to deny it or change the subject: polygamy isn’t polyamory, a newspaper article isn’t a bill in the legislature…whatever.

But with this article the campaign for polyamory has now taken its first step in Connecticut…and it was the push for same-sex marriage that made it possible. Just don’t expect our opponents to ever admit it. 

My previous post on Mayor Perez withdrawing from the National Day of Prayer event at the state Capitol got the attention of far left bloggers and a liberal radio host. Perhaps unsuprisingly, the actual event held far less interest for them.

That’s unfortunate for the same reason Mayor Perez’ withdrawal is unfortunate. Many of our opponents say they are Christians and, in fact, in a Courant op-ed published after the 2004 election, (”Kerry Lost The Values Vote”) Mayor Perez himself wrote that

to regain status as the national majority party, [Democrats] must be willing to embrace those for whom faith in God is a key component of civic participation.

Whatever our differences, one would hope prayer would be an activity where we could–sometimes, at least–come together.

But if our opponents had attended the NDP event at the Capitol it is true that they would have found their culturally left views under serious challenge. Only the challenge wasn’t coming from me…it was coming from the Hartford dignitary who did attend, Police Chief Daryll Roberts.

Speaking to a group that at one point reached standing-room-only size, Chief Roberts’ talk made a tremendous impact on the crowd. He called himself “a praying chief” and noted that he was a deacon in his church (his pastor was present). He asked us to work and pray that kids will be brought to God. He said he deals with the kids who are not coming to God, the ones who will kill you over a minor disagreement.

The Chief sees faith as the solution to the problems he faces on the streets of Hartford and was not afraid to say so. In fact, he chastised those who oppose public prayer.

And that’s not all. The Chief noted that we teach sex ed in the public schools, but, he said, not abstinence. He went on to criticize the fact that they took prayer out of the schools but put sex ed in. When sex ed is allowed but prayer is not, the Chief said, something is wrong.

The Chief’s message got a rousing reception from the crowd. He is certainly someone who knows firsthand the havoc the cultural left’s hostility to faith and family has wrought on the streets of Hartford.

That same crowd–chuckling over Mayor Perez’s withdrawal from the NDP–will likely miss the Chief’s point. But let’s pray that they don’t.

Three years ago Connecticut’s pro same-sex “marriage” Episcopal bishop sent his henchmen to change the locks and confiscate the property of a pro-family church in Bristol, replacing their pastor with one loyal to him. According to Saturday’s Courant, he just tried the same thing in Groton…but this time it was the man he sent who found himself locked out:

Bishop Seabury is one of six Connecticut churches with either severed or strained ties to the diocese — a deterioration sparked by Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith’s support of the 2003 election of Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire.

Since that time, Bishop Seabury has drawn further and further from the Episcopal Church, voting last January to leave the diocese and join the Convocation of Anglican Churches in North America (CANA), a self-described missionary effort in the U.S. sponsored by the Church of Nigeria.

But they’re not ready to give up the keys to the building — putting the congregation on a collision course with Episcopalian authority in Connecticut.

Pro same-sex “marriage” activists claim to be the agents of tolerance. But whatever that agenda touches–whether the National Day of Prayer or the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut–the result is to divide people further:

In January, Smith ordered the congregation to vacate the property by Jan. 20 and dismissed its church leaders.

The congregation responded on Jan. 20 by defying that order, refusing to leave and re-electing the leaders.

In an annual meeting that afternoon, members of the orthodox, evangelical congregation laid hands on Gauss and their re-elected leaders and prayed, affirming their commitment to the path they had chosen.

Pro same-sex “marriage” activists champion “diversity”…until you dare to disagree with them:

This is not the first time the Connecticut diocese has employed such tough tactics against one of its priests. In 2006, Smith defrocked Mark Hansen, the former pastor of St. John’s in Bristol, over similar issues. 
 

A curious episode at the state Capitol last week has us thinking of Jonah Goldberg’s book. As a favor to the CT House of Prayer (CHOP), we submitted this announcement to the legislative bulletin about an event CHOP is hosting:

National Day of Prayer Event

Mayor Eddie Perez, Police Chief Darryl Roberts and Peter Wolfgang from the Family Institute of CT will join other speakers [emphasis added] for this annual event marking the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, May 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Room 2A of the LOB. For further information contact coordinator Audrey Church McIntyre at 860-716-0247.

Here’s what the bulletin printed instead:

*NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER EVENT

Mayor Eddie Perez, Police Chief Darryl Roberts and Peter Wolfgang, from the Family Institute of Connecticut, cordially invite [emphasis added] all legislators and staff to attend the annual event celebrating the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, May 1, 2008 from 11: 00 A. M. to 1: 00 P. M. in Room 2A of the LOB. For further information, please contact Audrey Church McIntyre at (860) 716-0247.

Mayor Perez, Chief Roberts and my own name were chosen for the announcement because those were the names mentioned on the National Day of Prayer’s own web site. But there’s a big difference between the language we submitted (”will join other speakers”) and the language in Friday’s bulletin (”cordially invite”), which falsely implied that the three of us were co-hosting the event.

We became aware of the error late Friday when CHOP was contacted by Mayor Perez’s office, which had received complaints about the announcement. Today’s bulletin has no mention of Mayor Perez or Chief Roberts, but is otherwise unchanged–now falsely implying that FIC is hosting the event. In fact, the event is sponsored by CHOP and I am just one of many invited speakers from all across the ideological spectrum.

But the interesting thing here is the intolerance of pro same-sex “marriage” activists.

Connecticut House of Prayer had no problem inviting Hartford’s pro same-sex “marriage” Mayor Perez to the National Day of Prayer and I had no problem with our names appearing together on the NDP web site or the legislative bulletin. It is, after all, an event focused on prayer. 

But the perception that Mayor Perez was co-hosting an event–even a prayer event!–with FIC was more than he (or his pro same-sex “marriage” supporters) could bear. “Marriage equality” activists praying with their pro-family opponents? Perish the thought!

Remember this the next time pro same-sex “marriage” activists tell you that pro-family citizens are the intolerant ones.

Update: We have just received confirmation that Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez has pulled out of the National Day of Prayer.

First there was the typically overwrought pro sex-ed Susan Campbell column:

Connecticut is one of the bluest states imaginable, yet public discussion about sex education in schools can easily jettison us back to the days of the Scopes trial, when fiery preachers railed against modernity, and movie theaters were considered Satan’s temple…

Yet the opposition shouts down the rest of us. They write letters. They send e-mails. Legislators need to hear from you. To read the bill, go to www.cga.ct.gov. At the top of the screen, next to “Bill,” type 5591, then click on “Go.”

Campbell is almost physically incapable of describing her opponents with anything approaching charity, she cites widely debunked studies like Mathematica’s and she misleads her liberal readers to believe the bill she supports would require sex ed. But give her this: she paid us the huge backhanded compliment of finding us so influential that she felt it necessary to rouse the Courant’s readers to lobby for a bill we oppose.

Tell the Courant that Campbell’s columns make the paper a blatant advocate for abortion and same-sex “marriage” and the Courant will patiently tell you her role is different than the news sections. But if that is the case, how to explain the big front page article in today’s Courant, which tries to do for the sex-ed bill what Campbell tried to do for it?

The article gives major coverage to an “AIDS Awareness” lobbying event held at the state capitol yesterday for the purpose of passing the sex-ed bill. An excerpt:

“Our last seven cases were teens ages 14 to 19,” said Danielle Warren-Dias, a case manager in the pediatric HIV/AIDS program at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. “We thought we would be shrinking our program; now we’re expanding.”

Warren-Dias said six of the seven new cases at the children’s hospital were among young men engaged in homosexual activity. She did not describe the seventh case.

The persistence of new HIV and AIDS cases among young people, combined with high rates of other sexually transmitted diseases among Connecticut teens, points to the need for more education about sex — both inside and outside of schools, advocates said.

The paper vaguely acknowledges that the bill is “controversial” and that “opponents” have concerns, though the reporter could not be bothered to name a single opponent, let alone interview one. Nor do they mention the crazier comments these sex-ed activists are prone to make at public events.

When we held our Pro-Family Rally earlier this month the Courant warned us it had to be “pretty severe” in determining what is newsworthy because the paper gets flooded with pleas and press releases during the legislative session. That seemed a reasonable, content-neutral answer and we were subsequently pleased with the photos of the event.

But lobby for a politically correct cause supported by the Courant’s staff and you get the front page coverage the sex-ed activists received today. The bias may not be intentional, but it is there.

According to today’s Courant it is still an open question as to whether or not one Yale student’s disgusting abortion “art” project was a hoax:

The artwork that the press flocked to Yale on Tuesday to see was nowhere to be found. Walking past colorful prints and abstract landscapes, the reporters descended into a sunken gallery space where Aliza Shvarts’ senior art project should have hung.

The Yale University senior sparked a national uproar after telling the student press last week that she repeatedly inseminated herself, “performed repeated self-induced miscarriages” and would use the blood to create artwork as a way of commenting on the form and function of the female body.

Yale has called it performance art and a “creative fiction,” and refused to let her hang the work — a cube wrapped in blood-smeared sheets of plastic — until she publicly acknowledges it as such. Yale also wants assurances that Shvarts did not try to inseminate herself or abort any pregnancies and that the art will not contain human blood.

So far, the artist has declined to meet Yale’s demands, while Yale has labeled her denials still more performance art.

The AP asked for my reaction last week:

Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, an anti-abortion group, said his anger was not mitigated by the fact that Shvarts was never pregnant.

“I’m astounded by this woman’s callousness,” he said. “There are thousands of women in this country who are dealing with the pain of having had an abortion, with the trauma of having suffered a miscarriage. For her to make light of that for her own purposes is just beyond words.”

First, the good news. Embryo-destructive research has become so obviously pointless that even our state’s scientists have begun to notice it:

The Connecticut Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee doled out almost $10 million in state grants to Connecticut scientists Tuesday [April 1st], including one that has the potential to take some of the controversy out of stem cell research.

That grant went to a group of University of Connecticut scientists who formed a rare collaboration between researchers at the main campus in Storrs and the Health Center in Farmington.

Led by Theodore Rasmussen of the Center for Regenerative Biology at UConn, the group plans to coax human skin cells into embryonic cells through a process called nuclear reprogramming. The process, one of the hottest fields in biology, does not require the use of human embryos to create stem cells, removing a major ethical hurdle to stem cell research.

But despite that “major ethical hurdle,” our state is still willing to put your tax dollars to work on clone-and-kill research:

Another grant went to a private biotech company called Evergen that was started at UConn by cloning pioneer Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang, who announced two years ago that he would attempt to be the first to clone a human embryo for the purpose of creating stem cells.

Yang has returned to his native China, where he is battling cancer, and his lab is being run by other researchers. And while it appears that nuclear reprogramming might make embryo cloning obsolete, the committee Tuesday set aside $900,000 for Evergen’s work.

So that’s $900,000 of your money to ethically questionable human cloning research which “might” be obsolete, as the Courant delicately describes it. Now that it’s three years later, does anyone even remember that the 2005 law authorizing state funding of this research supposedly forbade any of it being spent on cloning?

Finally, there’s the ”island of Dr. Moreau” research:

The longest debate, by far, centered on a proposal by Yale School of Medicine researcher D. Eugene Redmond to find a way to repair brain cells damaged by Parkinson’s disease by transplanting stem cells from human fetal brain tissue into the brains of monkeys.

The so-called neural stem cells have showed promise in mice, but monkey brains are much more similar to those of humans and thus an essential component of testing before such treatment could ever be tried on human subjects, said Haifan Lin, director of the Yale Stem Cell Center.

In an eerie echo of the sci fi classic, this reseach will literally be conducted on an island: St. Kitts in the Caribbean.