Tag Archives: kerrigan

You can be polled on gay marriage – but you can’t vote on it!

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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.

Connecticut Supreme Court Justice says gay marriage “not going away”

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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.

Read the rest here.

Connecticut after same-sex marriage: now what?

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A reader writes with some concern asking what options pro-family forces have in Connecticut in the wake of the Kerrigan decision legalizing same-sex marriage:

Is there going to be an amendment or a vote that the public can make like in California to ban the same sex marriage here in Connecticut?  How do we ban it here as well?  Is it too late?

This is an important question: is it possible to overturn the Kerrigan decision by electoral or some other means?  There are indeed options, none of which, I hasten to say, has any chance of success absent divine intervention.  However, before we even begin to explore political or legal options, we do well to take stock of the new realities.  Do we really understand the place at which we have arrived?

In Connecticut, gay marriage will mean a mandatory and total acceptance of homosexuality in all spheres of life.  Make no mistake: this represents the true end of the long and deliberate process of divorcing society from its Christian underpinnings.  We must realize that there is no longer any sense at all in which we can say that Christianity is the animating principle of government or society in Connecticut, or any other place where there is homosexual marriage.

Think about it: in half a lifetime, homosexuality has gone from being an aberration and a psychiatric disorder not frequently discussed in polite society to being on a par with heterosexual marriage. Indeed, a new form of tolerance demands that we view it as such, but this new “tolerance” is not tolerance at all; it is intolerance of all who dare question the new orthodoxy.  Thus the crafters of the new orthodoxy have become the intolerant bigots they accused Christians of being.  If recent events are any guide, homosexual activists will not be willing to surrender what they have gained over the last 40 years.   Indeed, the acceptance of homosexuality will now be enforced with all the machinery that the State has at its disposal.  Religious conscience will be steamrolled in nearly all cases, as we are already seeing in the case of justices of the peace.

The full effects of this have not been seen yet in Connecticut, as they have in Massachusetts.  The language of civil rights, now just as fully applicable to homosexuality as it is to matters of race, will mandate indoctrination of children and trump all rights of parents to guide their children’s education.  Exaggeration?  Not at all. In Massachusetts, the schools openly promote homosexuality and parents can neither opt out nor even be notified!

Christians are now a minority in matters of morality despite whatever numerical majority they may still enjoy.  The court system, having severed itself from our Constitution, has become inimical to the faith.  The sooner we will simply grow up and face this the better off we will be.  Notice I did not say that there is no Christian influence, or remnant of Christians in the region.  However, it is past time that we woke up.  Just this month we have seen that even Californians, famously liberal, voted against homosexual marriage when they had a chance.  Perhaps their familiarity with in-your-face homosexual activism pushed them over the edge.  So is there hope?  Yes.  Will it require new approaches, new  mindsets, and new tools?  Absolutely.

Having said all of that, what options do we have?

Connecticut does not have any right of initiative such as Californians have to propose and create amendments to the Constitution or State laws.  So scratch that option right at the outset.

One option would be for the Connecticut Supreme Court to overturn its own decision in Kerrigan.  While anything is possible, this seems highly unlikely given the deference that judges give to their own precedents.  The Court would have to adopt the reasoning of the dissenting justices over time and acknowledge some error, some change in society’s views, etc.

Could someone appeal from this decision to the Federal Courts?  Extremely unlikely, as the Federal Courts do not like to interfere with decisions from the highest court of a State which interpret that State’s Constitution.  They taught us in law school that States can always recognize more rights than the Federal government, and this is one of those cases.  Incidentally, this means that even if a Federal Defense of Marriage Amendment were passed Connecticut might still have gay marriage, depending on how it was worded.

Another option is a convention which could amend the Constitution. There are two ways to call for a Constitutional Convention.  First, as we saw this year, the voters must be presented every twenty years with the option to vote for a Constitutional Convention. Since we’ve just seen this question go down in flames, we will not get another chance at this one until 2028!   A second way would be for the Legislature to vote for a Convention.  This requires a 2/3 vote of each house of the Legislature and cannot take place less than ten years after a previous Convention.  Again, this option is only to have a Convention, and does not guarantee what would take place at the Convention.  See Article Thirteen of the State Constitution here.

Yet another option, by far the quickest and easiest in some ways, would be for the Legislature to simply pass a Constitutional Amendment.  However, in our current political climate (and Connecticut being the State with the lowest percentage of Evangelicals), this would pose great difficulties.  The Sixth Amendment to the State Constitution provides:

Amendments to this constitution may be proposed by any member of the senate or house of representatives. An amendment so proposed, approved upon roll call by a yea vote of at least a majority, but by less than three-fourths, of the total membership of each house, shall be published with the laws which may have been passed at the same session and be continued to the regular session of the general assembly elected at the next general election to be held on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November in an even-numbered year. An amendment so proposed, approved upon roll call by a yea vote of at least three-fourths of the total membership of each house, or any amendment which, having been continued from the previous general assembly, is again approved upon roll call by a yea vote of at least a majority of the total membership of each house, shall, by the secretary of the state, be transmitted to the town clerk in each town in the state, whose duty it shall be to present the same to the electors thereof for their consideration at the next general election to be held on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November in an even-numbered year. If it shall appear, in a manner to be provided by law, that a majority of the electors present and voting on such amendment at such election shall have approved such amendment, the same shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of this constitution. Electors voting by absentee ballot under the provisions of the statutes shall be considered to be present and voting.

Let me put my lawyer glasses on.  As I read it, this is potentially a multi-year process, approved by 3/4 of the Legislators (or at least 1/2 of them and then 1/2 of the Legislators from the next session) and then submitted to the voters afterwards.

Is it really possible that Connecticut voters can apply enough pressure on their State Legislators, some of whom are openly gay, to make this last possibility become a reality?  There’s only one way to know, and that’s to try it.  In California this squeaked by.  What would happen here?

Can you refuse to marry a gay couple in Connecticut?

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If you are a public official, the answer is clearly “no.”  Attorney-General Blumenthal has issued an opinion which recognizes gay marriage as being on a par with other civil rights, pursuant to the recent Supreme Court decision in the Kerrigan case.  Says Mr. Blumenthal:

Section 46b-22 does not impose a duty on persons authorized to perform marriages to perform a marriage for any particular couple or establish a right for couples seeking to marry to have the ceremony performed by a particular authorized person.  However, as is currently the case, public officials who have been authorized to perform marriages may not refuse to perform a marriage for discriminatory reasons, in violation of the Connecticut Constitution.

 

As I read this, clergy may refuse to marry anyone, but public officials who are authorized to solemnize marriages may not, as it would be a violation of those persons’ state constitutional rights.

The Greenwich Time ran an interesting piece last week about the impact of our new situation upon justices of the peace.

In the wake of his expanded duties, one justice of the peace was thinking about stepping down.

“I haven’t had to face that issue, thank God,” said justice Forbes Delany, asked if he would be willing to perform gay marriages. “I can turn down anyone.”

Three days after the release of Blumenthal’s legal opinion, Delany said he was no longer interested in being a justice of the peace. Asked if his decision was influenced by Blumenthal’s statement that justices may not refuse to marry gays, Delany said only, “I think I have to take my name off the list.”

Reactions from other justices range from disappointment to celebration.

Byram Republican Emil Smeriglio, a justice for 25 years and born-again Christian, said last week, “Frankly, it’s against my religion.”

“It’s a discretionary call, I thought,” he said.

 

I’m afraid that Mr. Delany and Mr. Smeriglio will have to make a call based on conscience in our Brave New State.  Indeed, this is only the beginning of a soft expulsion of committed Christians and other traditionalists from public life.