FIC Blog

Pro same-sex “marriage” activists have vowed to renew their push to redefine marriage in the 2007 legislative session and the Courant is aiding their efforts by what it does and does not cover on this topic. Despite its small turnout, for instance, this event is featured in yesterday’s paper:

LaPlante and Cimino, along with a few dozen other couples, came to a gay wedding expo at the Sheraton Hartford Sunday afternoon. More than 35 vendors hawking everything from invitations to videography, cakes to catering, sat at tables beneath chandeliers in a hotel meeting room. Dance music pumped from the speakers of a DJ, who had set up just beyond the displays of a local florist…

The couples at the Sheraton Sunday were overwhelmingly female. They collected business cards, browsed through books of wedding photographs showing smiling heterosexual newlyweds and tried to hold conversations over the thumping beat of Cher and other disco singers…

Even though the crowd was thin, many of the vendors said they were happy they came.

And yes, for those of you who have been asking, we are aware of the lengthy, several-pages-long front page piece in the Courant’s Sunday, April 30th edition spotlighting lesbian relationships. The strongly negative reactions it provoked in the paper’s readers was covered in the letters-to-the-editor section as well as on the May 1 and May 3 posts of the Courant reader representative’s blog:

“Then a week later I see literally pages of the front section of the newspaper given over to one subject, and that subject is treated with vulgarities, etc. [‘From Pain, Family’]. I skimmed the stories as I did not think they were very interesting. Was the theme that women who have bad relationships with men sometimes turn into homosexuals or turn to homosexual relationships? I doubt if even the homosexual community is pleased with that assertion, given their preferred reasons for their behavior…

A Granby reader wrote “to the editor & circulation department of The Hartford Courant:” “As a result of your front page pictures and article on Sunday supporting the moral poverty of homosexuality, I would request that you terminate my subscription. You have the freedom to print what you want, but freedom is the privilege to do what you ought to do, not what you want. The Courant’s continued siege on the family and the heterosexual marriage shows that you no longer count it a privilege to enter my house. I will no longer dine on your diet of tolerance and entitlement. You may be ‘America’s Oldest Continuously Published Newspaper,’ however, it is one news story with a sad ending.”

While devoting an inordinate amount of space to pro same-sex “marriage” stories that repel its own readership, the Courant ignored a story that will have a tremendous impact on the future of our state: how same-sex “marriage” will destroy religious and parental freedoms. From a wire-story that appeared in the Saturday Republican-American but not, of course, in the Courant:

BOSTON — Ever since her 5-year-old brought home a book from kindergarten that depicted a gay family, Tonia Parker has felt that her parenting has been under attack in the only state that allows same-sex marriage.

She and her husband, David, didn’t want to discuss sexual orientation yet with their son, and were shocked that the book was included in a “diversity book bag” last year. David Parker subsequently got arrested for refusing to leave a Lexington school after officials refused to meet his demand that he be notified when homosexuality was discussed in his son’s class.

Now the Parkers and another couple have sued school officials in federal court, claiming Lexington officials violated their parental rights to teach morals to their own children.

The way they and other opponents of gay marriage see it, the 2003 ruling that cleared the way for same-sex weddings has emboldened Massachusetts gay rights advocates to push their views in schools and ignore those who feel homosexuality is immoral…

Officials there say that since same-sex marriage is part of life in Massachusetts, it comes up naturally and that it’s impossible to notify parents every time the issue is discussed.

“It certainly strengthens the argument that we need to teach about gay marriage because it’s more of a reality for our kids,” said Paul Ash, superintendent of schools in Lexington. “The children see married, gay couples.”

FIC has warned all along that if same-sex “marriage”/civil unions were legalized it would lead to attacks on religious freedom and changes in school curriculums. Our predictions are now coming true. But you won’t read about it in the Courant. Connecticut’s paper of record would rather tell you about sparsely attended “gay wedding expos.”