 | | FIC director Peter Wolfgang, man without a prayer |
As Connecticut citizens gather today in New Haven and West Hartford to celebrate the first gay marriages, it's clear that among the political casualties of the last election was the Family Institute of Connecticut (FIC), the last insurrectional hope of the theocratic hard-right in the state. Among its litany of abject failures, including the state court decision that, like Roe v. Wade, has effectively closed off its practical options:
Policy pipsqueaks: Despite its substantial budget, FIC has historically been phenomenally ineffective in moving legislation. Its poor track record extended into the last session, when it batted 0, losing multiple legislative votes on the requirement that all hospitals (including Catholic hospitals) offer emergency contraception to rape victims, and losing a Judiciary Commmittee vote on marriage equality.
Most significantly and damningly, of course, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that denial of marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples violated the state Constitution, a decision that shut the door on all legislative restrictions and on the FIC's relevance.
Public opinion pariahs. While the FIC's member alerts are filled with populist, conspiratorial histrionics about how the "will of the people" has been frustrated by elected officials and judges, the organization has also failed in the court of public opinion, with growing majorities in Connecticut expressing support of equal rights for gays and lesbians. FIC tried to frame its opposition to emergency contraception as a campaign against religious persecution, a message complicated by the reality that 74% of Catholics in the state endorsed the emergency contraception requirement. Their victimology narrative was finally decimated by the Catholic bishops' announcement that the compromise measure approved by the state legislature and vociferously opposed by FIC was acceptable to the Church, after all.
Just after the Connecticut Supreme Court announced its marriage decision, when any public shock or backlash should have reached its peak, a UCONN poll revealed that 53% of state residents supported the court's action. A later poll indicated that 55% of likely voters opposed a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality. (Overwhelming majorities in the latter poll expressed support for the rights of gays to serve in the military and adopt children.)
Electoral flops. FIC repeatedly threatens dire consequences at election time for politicians who support equality, and they repeatedly fail to deliver on those threats. Once again, no matter how you measure it, pro-equality candidates endorsed by Love Makes a Family (LMF) came out ahead of FIC endorsees in 2008.
General election results - Family Institute & Love Makes a Family endorsees, 2008
| |
FIC |
LMF |
| Endorsed challengers/open seat candidates who won |
19% |
38% |
| Endorsed incumbents who won |
91% |
97% |
| New allies elected to legislature |
2 |
9 |
| Candidates who won in head to head FIC-LMF match-ups |
40% |
60% |
| Elections resulting in district party change |
0 |
3 |
More on electoral results and Family Institute finances below. |
Some electoral highlights:
- Three of the four incumbent Republicans who lost re-election in 2008 were endorsed by the FIC and had 100% FIC voting records over the last four years. The only LMF-endorsed incumbent that lost was a Republican, Senator Rob Russo.
- It is always more difficult to elect candidates when doing so would switch party control of that district. LMF helped elect three such candidates, and the FIC none.
- LMF helped elect nine new pro-equality legislators to the General Assembly. There has been a similar growth in pro-equality elected officials in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is also legal, thanks to court intervention.
- In the primary election (not included in analysis above), all of the LMF-endorsed candidates won their races, while less than half of the FIC-endorsed candidates were successful.
- It's also notable that 64 of 75 candidates endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice CT were elected.
The final nail in the FIC's coffin was the 59% to 41% vote against the Constitutional Convention, the organization's theoretical if unrealistic route to overturning the court's pro-equality ruling. FIC complained that the Vote No campaign outspent the proponent committee, but the Catholic Conference, with major support from the Knights of Columbus, separately spent at least $300,000 on radio and TV ads in favor of the convention and raised at least double that amount. Final expenditure reports are not yet in. (The director of the "vote yes" commitee, Matthew Daly, and its treasurer, Rick Giordano, have very close ties to the FIC.)
In his egomaniacal response to the Supreme Court's decision, FIC director Peter Wolfgang took credit for the timing of the Court's announcement, claiming that he had "goaded" the Court into releasing its decision before election day, as part of a strategy that would enable the FIC to mobilize voters against civil rights. It didn't work out that way.
Instead, in a poll after the Court decision, 53 percent of Connecticut residents said that same-sex marriage would be "no factor at all" in their decisions on Election Day, while 35 percent said it would be a minor factor and 11 percent said it would be a major factor. The poll did not indicate how the issue would affect the decisions of this minority. It is plausible that most voters who were taking this issue into account favored pro-equality candidates.
As I argued about the 2006 election, I don't think that civil rights were at the top of the minds of most voters on election day. I do think that the kind of candidates who support marriage equality -- those who are open-minded and committed to fairness, equality, and opportunity -- have broad appeal to voters and volunteers.
Flagging finances. The FIC's 2007 financial reports are not yet publicly available, but previous reports do not bode well for the group's fiscal future. Between 2005 and 2006 (after the passage of civil unions legislation), income for the Institute's 501(c)(3) arm decreased by 11% and its 501(c)(4) lobbying wing lost 79% of its income. Both branches ended the year with a deficit. In contrast, for Love Makes a Family, the establishment of a new 501(c)(3) foundation, in addition to their existing 501(c)(4) organization, meant a 130% increase in total revenues between 2005 and 2006. In 2005, FIC's two main branches had raised 1.8 times as much money as LMF; by 2006, LMF's combined wings had raised 1.6 times as much as FIC.
For both organizations, the onset of public campaign financing, which banned direct contributions from PACs to participating candidates, has meant that each has raised and spent fairly small amounts of PAC money in the last electoral cycle.
History marches on
Having lost its raison d'être, the state-sanctioned denial of civil rights to gay people, FIC has little reason to struggle on and few hopes around which to rally its theocratic base. The FIC and Catholic Conference say that they will seek a constitutional ban on marriage equality through legislation next year, but that has about as much chance of passage as a ban on abortions. The FIC will almost certainly hobble on in some form for a while. They may continue to be subsidized by their hard-right sugar daddies, despite their ineffectiveness. They may try to oppose transgender equality, support expanded parental notification requirements for abortions, or select some other divisive pet issue.
But in the real world, they will be an eccentric sideshow relic, like the leadership of the state's ragtag anti-choice group, which has been reduced to incoherent rambling at public hearings about birth control as the root of all social evils. Or maybe, just maybe, with nothing else to do, they'll read their Bibles and start to think about the dangers that really do harm families - issues that Jesus really did talk about, like poverty, injustice, oppression, violence, selfishness, and adultery. Naaah.
Meanwhile, history and the electorate have moved on, and today is a day to celebrate as gay couples in New Haven and West Hartford are the first to obtain marriage licenses. State Representative Beth Bye is among those tying the knot. Heck, they're already so mainstream, there's a gay wedding expo scheduled for December. |
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