On Wednesday, July 28th the Family Institute of Connecticut will co-host a Pastors’ Breakfast at Voluntown Baptist Church. Peter Wolfgang will speak on threats to religious liberty in Connecticut. Pro-family pastors in eastern Connecticut who plan to attend should RSVP to 860-548-0066 by Friday, July 23rd.
Click here for directions to the church.
Peter Wolfgang of Family Institute of Connecticut
On Thursday, July 22nd from 7 pm to 9 pm the Family Institute of Connecticut will be holding its third annual Open House at their offices, 77 Buckingham Street in Hartford. Refreshments will be served. To RSVP, see the FIC’s contact page here.
The Bush Adminstration is still in power for a few more weeks, to the chagrin of Attorney-General Blumenthal. Federal regulations are being proposed that could supersede the plan under which Connecticut hospitals give contraception to rape victims. From the Courant:
The rule, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reinforces protections for health care workers and institutions who refuse to provide services they object to, including abortion.
When it takes effect Jan. 18, the regulation will override the 2007 Connecticut law that requires hospitals to provide emergency contraception, commonly known as Plan B, to rape victims, Blumenthal said.
“We went through a very lengthy, painstaking, contentious process to reach our statute in Connecticut, which has worked well for everyone,” Blumenthal said. “This administration’s new regulation threatens to blow apart that very significant balance of interests and compromise.”
At Mr. Blumenthal’s web site, his outrage was evident:
“I will fight this outrageous rule — the outgoing Bush Administration’s latest and last swipe at women’s health. This rule is an appalling insult and abuse — a midnight power grab to deny access to health care services and information, including even to victims of rape. Our strong coalition of states will fight fiercely to block this reprehensible threat to hard-fought patient and victim rights.
“This Provider Conscience Rule, thinly veiled as a promise of fairness to doctors, jeopardizes assurances that sexual assault victims are provided emergency contraception. This new rule puts personal agendas before patient care — protecting doctor objections, but entirely ignoring the rights of rape victims and others to access birth control and other vital services. This rule upsets the careful balance between physician beliefs and a patient’s right to affordable, accessible health care.
In September 2007 Connecticut Catholic Archbishop Mansell described the Connecticut bishops’ policy as follows:
Catholic hospitals will continue to administer a pregnancy test to determine if the woman has conceived.
If the pregnancy test is positive, contraceptive medication will not be administered.
This policy is consistent with the new law and with the Ethical and Religious Directives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Catholic teaching is adamantly opposed to abortion, but not opposed to emergency contraception for a woman who is a victim of rape.
This position has been criticized and even satirized by some other Catholics who feel it does not go far enough in upholding Catholic teaching. See discussion here at the FIC Blog.
So says the Family Institute of Connecticut’s Executive Director, Peter Wolfgang, in a welcome return to blogging this week. Wolfgang assails the approach of our new media-political regime. Speaking about the Kerrigan case, Wolfgang says:
The court released its decision on the Friday before Columbus Day weekend. The following Tuesday a Courant/UConn poll was released purporting to show that most Connecticut residents approved of the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage.
This is how a “revolution from above” is conducted. Step 1: Have four judges undemocratically force same-sex “marriage” on Connecticut. Step 2: Have the media rush in to say to the public, “Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. Most of you are OK with this. Only a few rabble-rousers oppose it.”
But how accurate is a poll taken over a weekend — particularly a three-day holiday weekend — when many people are away? The Courant’s poll on the constitutional convention, for instance, begun on a Saturday, misjudged the “no” vote by 20 points.
Perhaps this is why those who cite polls to buttress their claim that Connecticut residents support same-sex marriage are unwilling to let those same residents vote on it.
Wow. There – he said it. The simple fact of the matter is that in States like ours, the public opinion is not listened to, much less adhered to. We cannot even say that it is influenced or shaped any more so much as it is managed. The results are challenging, both for a weary public who want to be “fair-minded” and for a weak Church.
Carl Trueman writes a sobering post in Reformation 21, the online magazine of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, called “Goodbye Larry King, Hello Jerry Springer.” Trueman’s word picture neatly captures the marginalization of evangelicals and anyone else who might dare to challenge the emerging homosexual orthodoxy:
You can have the hippest soul patch in town, and quote Coldplay lyrics till the cows come home; but oppose homosexuality and the only television program interested in having you appear will soon be The Jerry Springer Show when the audience has become bored of baiting the Klan crazies. Indeed, evangelicals will be the new freaks….
When church leaders, faculty, and the movers and shakers of the evangelical world find themselves excluded from the reputable avenues of power and cultural and professional influence and preferment, then we will see what their doctrine of scripture is really like, whether it really is solid, whether it really shapes their lives, their actions, and their priorities. The question is: will those in positions of authority in the schools, colleges, denomination and seminaries have the backbone to do what is necessary? Will they be willing to consider the reproach of Christ greater than the treasures of Egypt? When the invitations to the Larry King Show dry up, to be replaced by those from Jerry Springer, will they hold the line? I wish I had seen more evidence that that was the case and could be more confident about the future.
We need only look at how quickly Rick Warren fell from Media Darling status once he took a biblical and yet gracious stand against homosexual marriage in California. I think we shall all soon be required to give a reason for the hope that lies within us – and be able to articulate what the living out of that hope entails, and why.
A very interesting article in the Yale Herald explored the response of Christians to the recent decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court in Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, establishing a right to gay marriage in our State. Writer Dennis Howe says Christians have sat silent but his article is also noteworthy for the revealing glimpses it gives of some of the participants at the center of the Kerrigan drama, particularly State Supreme Court Justice Richard Palmer.
The court issued its decision on Oct. 10, and, unsurprisingly, initiated an immediate backlash from opponents of gay marriage. Social conservatives and the religious right formed the Connecticut Constitution Convention Campaign to encourage voters to vote “yes” on a ballot proposal to call a constitutional convention that could reexamine the Supreme Court decision and potentially propose a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Supporters included Republican governor Jodi Rell, the Family Institute of Connecticut, and the state’s Roman Catholic bishops, who called on Catholic voters to vote “yes” on the convention. This was no small matter—46 percent of the state is Catholic, placing Connecticut second among the 50 states.
But in the weeks leading up to Election Day, this initially fervent conservative reaction began to steadily decline. In California, religious conservatives were busy raising $35 million in support of Proposition 8, and their amendment banning gay marriage in the state passed by four percentage points. In the closing days of the Connecticut campaign, however, proponents of the constitutional convention were being outspent 83 to 1 by their opponents, and despite polls that suggested that the majority of Connecticut citizens were opposed to same-sex marriages, the anti-gay marriage camp was conspicuously subdued. The convention failed by an overwhelming margin—almost 20 percentage points—and Kerrigan and Mock received their marriage license just one week later.
“People don’t seem to have a lot of energy to spend time undoing our decision,” said Justice Palmer when asked in a Trumbull College Master’s Tea on Mon., Nov. 20. “We can say with certainty that there is going to be gay marriage in this state for the foreseeable future. Unlike in California, it’s not going away.”
Justice Palmer has taken the spiritual temperature of the State’s Catholics and Evangelicals and found us to be as cold as ice. Time alone will tell but for the moment he is probably correct.
The piece also contains an in-depth profile of Evangelicals working at Yale and their response to the culture as a whole on these issues, which is well worth your time.