RICK GREEN, NE MAGAZINE AND…A NEW ALLY FOR EVANGELICALS?
July 6th, 2006 by Peter
As we catch up from this blog’s brief hiatus, there are a few key items from the last two weeks that we want to mention. For starters, Courant columnist Rick Green writes in opposition, sort of, to the censorship of pro-life license plates:
The real issue is that critics think Children First is delivering a coded message about abortion. Maybe it is, but nobody is being forced to buy the plates.
Elizabeth Rex, founder of The Children First Foundation, says all she wants to do is promote adoption. I believe her, mostly.
More importantly, Children First passed previous reviews by the DMV and now it’s being selectively targeted.
Green’s recognition of the unfairness of the pro-abortion censors is welcome, although his solution—that we should ban all vanity plates—is disappointing. Why should pro-abortionists’ manic desire to censor the pro-life message lead to the banning of a program that raised thousands of dollars for numerous good causes? And Green’s hedging throughout the piece—”you won’t find me at an anti-abortion rally” he assures his nervous liberal readers—shows once again the need for a socially conservative Courant columnist who understands our concerns, rather than one who throws us an occasional bone.
While Green wants his readers to know he’s not one of “those people,” another group wants us to know that they are: Muslims. From a Courant piece on a recent local Islamic conference:
Zahid Bukhari, who directs the Center for Muslim and Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, said that while there has been significant progress in interfaith connections between Muslims and Jews, Catholics and mainline Protestants, there has been little contact between Muslims and evangelical Christians.
“That is definitely a connection that has been missing. I think it is unfortunate that there has been so little dialogue,” Bukhari said. “This is a group [evangelicals] that has a done important work in the inner city and has significant influence on foreign policy at the national level. I think it would be important for Muslims and evangelicals to begin talking to one another, because we share many of the same kinds of family and social values.”
In other news, the “Needle” page of the Courant’s NE Magazine, which appears weekly and promotes same-sex “marriage” almost as often, ran a typical puff piece on June 25th. What’s interesting is that, for the second week in a row, the page nervously acknowledged FIC’s work:
Q4 U.S. Sen. Bill Frist’s proposal for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage failed on June 7, but The Family Institute of Connecticut has an initiative right now that would call for a gay marriage ban on the state level. Would you marry if you could?
NE’s constant pro same-sex “marriage” needling appears to have left its readers unimpressed:
Despite NE Magazine’s attempt to put a happy face on same-sex parenting with “Two Dads, One Family,” [June 25] a careful reading reveals that a two dads (or two moms) arrangement is simply not the equivalent of the time-honored one-mom/one-dad family unit, no matter how much spin is placed on the same-sex mutation.
Case in point: Daughter Brittany’s timorous response toward discussing female issues with either of her two dads. A similar case can be made when adolescent boys’ concerns/anxieties about nocturnal emissions arise in a two moms family where neither can speak from experience in the matter. The necessity to bring friends into the picture and the admission that “Bill and I can bring a lot to the table, but not 100 percent,” are defacto indications of serious and obvious parenting deficiencies within same-sex unions/ “marriages.”
Peter Kushkowski, Portland