FIC Blog

It’s such an off-the-charts howler of an inaccuracy that you can’t help but wonder how The Courant’s letters-to-the-editor editor let it be published, let alone in the Sunday edition:

…same-sex marriage has existed for centuries and was known in China, Egypt, Greece, Rome and Mesopotamia.

But in the rush to glorify the U.S. Supreme Court’s pro same-sex “marriage” rulings, Connecticut media has been positively drowning in historical revisionism these past few weeks.

I don’t mean just the usual smarminess–an amnesiac pro-abortion Republican op-ed writer, say, who thinks the GOP would win if only it dropped it’s pesky concern for children being killed in the womb or denied the right to a mom and a dad (because Republicans who ran away from social issues, like Mitt Romney and John McCain, did so much better than Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush?) or Colin McEnroe telling his readers that, yes, in Texas taxes are lower and the dollar stretches further, but Connecticut is better because Mike Lawlor can “marry” a man here. Even on The Courant’s best days its disdain for its few remaining conservative readers is simply de rigueur.

What has reached new levels these last few weeks is Connecticut media’s whitewashing of state history–indeed, the very recent history of just the last ten years–on the subject of same-sex “marriage” in Connecticut.

I know. I was there. So were many of you. So were the reporters writing history’s second draft these past few weeks. But the revisionist version they are now writing bears little resemblance to what we all experienced.

So, for instance, in a retelling of the State Supreme Court’s 2008 same-sex “marriage” ruling, Connecticut is described as “long a refuge from the nation’s culture wars.” You would never guess from this article that same-sex “marriage” was defeated every year at the state legislature for a decade, that the issue provoked a petition drive that gathered 100,000 signatures for the Defense of Marriage, Protect Marriage rallies gathering thousands of state residents on three separate occasions, and scores of weekday rallies and lobby days that gathered hundreds…all of which led to a law explicitly defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

The same article tells us that “the once-radical notion [of same-sex “marriage”] has largely receded into the background in Connecticut.” In fact, within six months of the Court’s ruling, the two politicians who led the legislative push for same-sex “marriage” tried to pass a law stripping Connecticut’s Catholic bishops and priests of authority over their own parishes, a move widely believed to be payback against the Church for opposing same-sex “marriage.” Their overreach provoked a massive weekday rally of 5,000 angry Catholics and other pro-family citizens at the state Capitol. FIC Action used that momentum–plus the full-page ads we placed in all 16 of Connecticut’s daily newspapers for a week–to secure the strongest religious liberty protections against same-sex “marriage” in the country. Any assertion that same-sex “marriage” has receded as an issue in Connecticut ought to take into consideration that history–not to mention all the other Connecticut culture war battles of the last five years, some of them about same-sex “marriage,” that are mentioned in my recent anniversary message. (And how could it “recede” as an issue if same-sex “marriage” was no big deal in the first place, here in the state that has “long been a refuge from the nation’s culture wars”?)

An earlier Courant article did allow some of this history to reach its readers, via a quote from me:

“It is especially outrageous that Connecticut’s same-sex marriage law can be imposed on the federal government because that law was not even enacted by the people of Connecticut or our elected representatives. It was a 4-3 decision by our state Supreme Court,” Wolfgang added.

My quotes were immediately followed by this, in the reporter’s own voice:

Connecticut became the first state to grant gay and lesbian couples legal recognition without a court ruling in 2005, when the legislature approved — and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed — a bill allowing civil unions.

This is why a pro same-sex “marriage” politician claims “Connecticut has led the way on” same-sex “marriage” (in yet another same-sex “marriage” article in The Courant’s Jul. 2nd print edition).

Sounds like a big deal, right? It wasn’t. Connecticut “led the way”? We didn’t.

Connecticut’s pro same-sex “marriage” activists came roaring into the 2005 legislative session demanding “same-sex ‘marriage’ or nothing” and came limping out of the session with a civil unions law that explicitly defined marriage as a between a man and a woman. The national pro same-sex “marriage” movement made Connecticut’s anti-family activists take that position precisely because they knew that civil unions in 2005 would not be groundbreaking–Massachusetts had already become the first state to impose full same-sex “marriage” the year before.

Despite passing civil unions “without a court ruling,” Connecticut’s 2005 law was hardly noticed in the rest of the country. It did make the New York Times the next day…on page B5.

Ah, but that was all the part of the plan, pro same-sex “marriage” activists now tell us:

Lawlor said he and other supporters of a civil-unions law were correct in arguing that it eventually would provoke a court to legalize marriage, since the civil-unions law provided all the benefits of marriage as controlled by state law.

Except that, in another episode from Connecticut’s same-sex “marriage” battle that has disappeared from history, pro same-sex “marriage” activists said all along that they wanted to win in the legislature, not the court. From FIC’s December 11, 2007 email alert:

That may be why even the liberal New Haven Register seemed to editorialize yesterday against what it rightly called “a state Supreme Court ruling that would effectively impose same-sex marriage in Connecticut.” In fact, even pro same-sex “marriage” Rep. Michael Lawlor (D-East Haven) recently said: “If I were on the Supreme Court, I’d find a way to boot it back to the legislature” [emphasis added].

We have left the original links in that quote though, of course, they no longer work. The online archives of Connecticut’s media outlets are being scrubbed clean of historically inconvenient information about our state’s same-sex “marriage” battles, while the articles celebrating same-sex “marriage” victories remain easily accessible.

In short, anti-family activists and the media would have you believe that there was no big battle over same-sex “marriage” in Connecticut prior to the Court’s ruling, or afterwards, that Connecticut “led the way” on same-sex “marriage,” and that it was the first choice of pro same-sex “marriage” politicians that the Court hand them their victory.

None of it is true.

So where does all of that leave us? Charles Krauthammer is probably right that Justice Kennedy “has planted the seed for going Roe next time.” The Courant reports my thoughts on what else will grow out of that seed:

Wolfgang predicted that the court’s ruling would mobilize opponents of same-sex marriage. “This energizes the pro-traditional marriage movement in all 50 states,” he said. “The entire history of the pro-life movement actually began after Roe v. Wade. In many ways, the fight over marriage is just beginning.”

(3,000 Connecticut residents attended FIC’s September 28, 2008 Rally to protest the State Supreme Court’s impending pro same-sex “marriage” ruling. Click here to see photos of the battle being written out of the history books.)