FIC Blog

Two years ago last Sunday the Connecticut Supreme Court undemocratically imposed same-sex “marriage.” Within six months state residents faced the worst attacks on religious liberty in living memory. And if you think the worst is behind us, you haven’t met Julie Kieras.

Julie was a language arts teacher in Windsor Locks who had recently been named Teacher of the Year. She took a leave of absence to care for her newborn child, during which she was nominated by the East Hartford Republican Town Committee to fill a vacancy on the town’s Board of Education (BOE).

With a record like hers, appointment to the BOE should have been a non-issue. But there was one problem. Julie is pro-family, a believer in traditional values.

You see, like thousands of you reading this email right now, Julie answered our call to be an active participant in our representative democracy. In 2009, Julie and her husband wrote a letter to the Judiciary Committee, asking that they amend the same-sex “marriage” codification bill to protect religious liberty.

That was too much for the self-professed champions of “tolerance.” Never mind that we succeeded in persuading the legislature—overwhelmingly—to pass that amendment into law. As far as our extremist opposition is concerned, Julie’s advocacy makes her a second-class citizen, unfit to hold public office.

They showed up at the BOE meeting this week to declare that the Board reject her nomination: out-of-town gay activists who had previously declared vandalism of churches to be “justice actions,” students who called her a hypocrite on the false premise that she home-schools her child (who is seven months old), and one resident of East Hartford—one!—who actually votes and pays taxes to the town.   

They called her a homophobic bigot. They accused her of causing gay people to commit suicide. They said her presence on the Board made them feel unsafe.

They put Julie Kieras and her family through all of this—said those horrible things about her, led that public defamation campaign against her—simply because this young mother exercised her birthright as an American and stood up for the liberties that have been ours since the nation’s founding.

But a funny thing happened on East Hartford’s road to political correctness. The town fought back. The BOE unanimously voted to confirm Julie to the Board.

Several BOE members scolded Julie’s extremist opponents for their misinformation, leaving gay activist students—who had clearly been manipulated by adults—admitting that they were confused about the facts. One self-identified gay member of the BOE even made a speech on Julie’s behalf.

The story of Julie Kieras shows what we are facing in Connecticut after the re-definition of marriage—and that it can be faced and defeated.

Simply because we stand up for the truth about marriage and the family, our opponents want to declare us beyond-the-pale and drive us out of public life altogether. We have seen this repeatedly in the two years since same-sex “marriage”—all the way up to Julie Kieras’ ordeal this week.

But we have also learned how to resist.

We learned how when a quickly-organized weekday rally of 4,500 people defeated the biggest legislative attack on the Catholic Church that we have ever seen. We learned how when FIC’s newspaper advertisements brought the 20,000 phone calls that forced the legislature to protect religious liberty from same-sex “marriage”—the very protection that Julie Kieras fought for.

And we learned how when the Town of East Hartford stood up to the bullying of Julie Kieras. 

We thank all those in East Hartford who defended Julie. And we ask our members to prepare for the next stage in this battle. Resistance is not enough.

We will fight for greater religious liberties and for the right of parents to be notified when their children are exposed to anti-family propaganda in the schools. We will fight toward the day when traditional marriage and self-government is restored in Connecticut.

Watch for more information on the battles that lie ahead.