Familiar Betrayal, New Twist
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton is a likely candidate for Governor of Connecticut in 2018. Six years ago Family Institute of Connecticut Action Committee endorsed Boughton for Lieutenant Governor, because:
Mark Boughton supports our values. He supports the passing of a parental notification law and a ban on partial-birth abortion. He told us that the CT Supreme Court decision redefining marriage was a “terrible” ruling that bypassed the democratic process and that there ought to be a full public discussion with public input on the definition of marriage.
But that was then. Here is what Mark Boughton apparently thinks of pro-life and pro-family voters now, according to a June 28th CT Mirror article:
“Republicans have got to learn to speak to the people of the 21st Century, and we don’t win elections when we spend our time telling people what to do in the bedroom or what to do with their bodies,” Boughton said.
FIC Action is not surpised to see pro-life concern for the unborn child distorted in this way. Nor are we surprised to see the pro-family concern that every child grow up in a home with a mom and a dad similarly distorted.
We are not even surprised to see Mark Boughton throw pro-life voters under the bus. That is an all-too-common experience for anyone familiar with the Republican Party in Connecticut.
No, what shocks us is the context of Mark Boughton’s attack on Connecticut’s pro-life and pro-family voters.
Mark Boughton is accusing Connecticut’s social conservatives of wanting to coerce or control others in an article about our wanting the right not to be forced by the government to violate our own religious liberty, our own conscience. (You can read more about the First Amendment Defense Act, which prevents the Federal Government from discriminating against gay marriage dissenters here.)
It is bad enough when a politician who once supported the right to life, and the right to let the people decide the issue of marriage, now attacks those principles. It is worse when that politician defames what were once his own principles.
But worst of all amid the politics of 2016, when pro-life and pro-family citizens are fighting simply for the right not to be coerced by government to violate our consciences, is for a politician to turn truth on its head and falsely accuse us of coercion because we want to be left alone by the government.
Socially liberal Republicans frequently say they are “pro-choice” or pro same-sex “marriage” because they believe in a smaller, less intrusive government. If they will not stand up for the religious liberty of gay marriage dissenters in this increasingly coercive environment, they are exposing even their claim to believe in small government as a lie.
We hope that Mayor Boughton reconsiders his decision to throw his former pro-life and pro-family allies under the bus. And that he restores his small government bona fides by defending our religious liberty. We’ll be watching.
