FIC Blog

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.
  

But it’s death did not go unnoticed. There is a major article, for instance, on page 5 of the April Catholic Transcript. Unfortunately, it does not appear on the paper’s web site. But here is an excerpt:

HARTFORD - Testimony by the public policy arm of the state’s bishops and by the Family Institute of Connecticut helped to kill a bill that would have required the state to recognize legal unions of same-sex couples from out of state…

Peter Wolfgang, president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, also testified in opposition to the bill. “The last section of this bill converts an out-of-state same-sex marriage to a civil union,” he said. “This type of legislation is contrary to Connecticut law, which explictly defines marriage as between a man and a woman.”

He also said the real purpose of H.B. 5925 “appears to be the continuation of the incremental, piecemeal strategy of redefining marriage in Connecticut.”

The Hartford Business Journal’s “influence” column also quotes my erroneous prediction that we would fail to stop the bill in committee. Looks like we had more “influence” than I realized.

That said, the Journal did some good reporting on how outnumbered we are at the state Capitol:

The Family Institute is also represented by Dolores Malloy from Malloy & Associates. Love Makes A Family has three in-house lobbyists and three lobbyists from Betty Gallo & Co.

We are not yet aware of any effort to revive the bill. But you see from the Journal piece what we’re up against. We will keep watching for news on this and other battles. 

“They converged in big numbers at the state Capitol today to rally against same-sex marriage and for the right to homeschool their children.” That was how Channel 3’s Al Terzi began a 5:30 pm Eyewitness News report about FIC Action’s Pro-Family Rally and Lobby Day yesterday. You can see the report that ran on the 12:00 pm edition of Eyewitness News by clicking here.

A “crowd of about 125″ attended our Rally, according to today’s Courant. That number appears on page B3, in a caption beneath a beautiful Shana Sureck photo of my daughter Elizabeth, age 7. You can view the Courant’s “Family Institute of Connecticut rally” photo gallery by clicking here. The Rally was also covered by Fox 61’s News at Ten show, the Archdiocese of Hartford’s “Crossroads” television program and airmaria.com.

We want to thank all of you who took time out of your busy day to attend our Rally and lobby your legislators for faith and family. The last time that full same-sex “marriage” was not before the legislature—2006—our Rally attracted 50 people. That 125 of you turned out yesterday to fight on six different bills is a sign to our opponents that we will defend the family whenever it is attacked—regardless of whether the attack is out in the open or “under the radar.”

We also want to thank all those who contributed to the Rally’s success. Rep. Arthur O’Neill (R-Southbury) addressed us on the need to restore the parental rights bill that he has championed. Pastor Adam Soderberg of South Church in Hartford gave a stirring speech on moral decay and our right to self-government. Pastor Jeff Roman of First Baptist Church in Tolland and Fr. Joseph Looney of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem inspired us with their prayers. Representatives David Aldarondo (D-Waterbury) and Selim Noujaim (R-Waterbury) offered bipartisan support for faith and family with their presence.

The Rally also marked the unveiling of FIC’s new youth wing with a remarkable speech by Chelsea Rankin, age 17. Several of FIC’s youth members were present at the Rally. Chelsea’s inspiring talk on youth who dare to defy the low expectations of the anti-family movement is just the first of many important contributions they will be making in the future.

We have been inundated with pictures of the Rally taken by many you who were in attendance. We will include a sampling of these wonderful photos in a future e-mail alert.

Once again, thank you so much for making our annual pro-family lobby day a success! Watch your in-box for news on future pro-family events and updates on the battles still to be won.

Our opponents are nothing if not tenacious–and they have friends in high places. A front page above-the-fold article in today’s Courant alleging discrimination against same-sex civil unions by H&R Block could revive the pro same-sex “marriage” bill that died in Judiciary on Monday. Interestingly, most of the Courant’s readers who have posted comments about the article–even some who are homosexual–disagree with the ACLU’s claim of discrimination. And last time I checked (10:45 this morning) most Courant readers responded “no” to the paper’s online poll asking whether H&R Block is discriminating. WTIC’s Jim Vicevich also tore the article to pieces this morning.

But the article’s real point was to try to influence the legislature to revive that bill. All the more reason for pro-family citizens to attend FIC Action’s April 3rd Rally and Lobby Day.

Monday night a bill that would have forced Connecticut to recognize out-of-state same-sex “marriages” died in committee. This marks our first victory in the Judiciary Committee in five years!

Not since the 2003 same-sex “domestic partnership” bill have we been able to defeat an attack by pro same-sex “marriage” forces inside the Lawlor-and-McDonald-led Judiciary Committee. Since then, anti-family activists continually gained strength in this key committee…until this year! The death of the 2008 same-sex “marriage” bill marks a major interruption in what had been pro same-sex “marriage” activists’ increasing sway over the Judiciary Committee.

And several Capitol insiders are saying FIC Action played a significant role in killing the bill! Following my testimony against the bill last week, one member of the Committee told me that my testimony had moved this legislator from the “yes” category to “undecided.” Other legislators yesterday also privately cited my testimony–particularly my testimony about a tax credit that would go only to same-sex couples–as one reason for the bill’s death.

And it was not only me–it was all of you who came to the Capitol last week to testify or otherwise made your opposition known. The Judiciary Committee had 100 bills to vote on by their 5 p.m. deadline Monday. Because we showed a significant level of opposition to the 2008 same-sex “marriage” bill, the Committee feared the bill would be “a talker”–that it would eat up so much of their time that they would not be able to pass other legislation by 5 p.m. Rather than face that prospect, they let the bill “die in committee.”

But this might not have happened but for the fact that so many of you heeded our call to send e-mails and testify at the Judiciary Committee. There are some who believe that our opponents at the state Capitol may have been testing us to see what opposition we would muster against this year’s stealth same-sex “marriage” bill. If so, it was you–our members–who passed the test with flying colors and gave us a victory the likes of which we have not seen in five years!

This shows how important it is for Connecticut’s pro-family citizens to make their voice heard at the Capitol. And it shows why we cannot let up. Though it is unlikely, the 2008 same-sex “marriage” bill could reappear as an amendment. Also, the Committee did pass the transgender bill, which we will work to defeat.

On Thursday, April 3rd FIC Action will hold a Pro-Family Rally and Lobby Day, beginning at 10:00 a.m. on the steps of the state Capitol. It is urgent that we turn out as many people as possible in order to keep these victories going. Please tell your friends and family and ask them to attend. And thank you for all you do to make possible Monday’s victory and all our other successes!