Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Campaigning for president in New Hampshire, Sen. Chris Dodd told a group of Concord high school students that anyone who would deny a gay child the right to be happy isn’t being honest. According to an Associated Press report , Dodd said, “We ought to be able to have these loving relationships.” The father of two young daughters in a second marriage, Dodd speculated that his daughters could grow up to be lesbians: “They may grow up as a different sexual orientation than their parents. How would I want my child to be treated if they were of a different sexual orientation?” According to the AP story, “Dodd, who opposed a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to man-woman unions, said he supports civil unions, but not gay marriage. Asked afterward what he sees as the difference, he said: ‘I don't think probably much in people's minds. If you're allowing that, all the protections you have there, you've covered it.’” Dodd has here carved out a painful and potentially un...

Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, said to be a moderate Republican, attempted at the end of June to bring together under the state GOP's big tent abortion advocate Jennifer Blei Stockman, the recipient of this year’s prestigious Prescott Bush Award, and possible Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts. A Greenwich resident, Stockman is the wife of Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, David Stockman, and co-chairwoman of The Republican Majority for Choice. Romney was featured as a presidential possibility in the June 20, 2005 issue of National Review under the title “Matinee Mitt.” Attendance at the dinner was considerably lower this year than in previous years. The event usually draws about a thousand Republican stalwarts. This year, only 550 Republicans showed up. Surveying the crowd, Rell said,“I think we have excellent attendance. She noted that some people had come expressly to see Stockman. At least one Greenwich Republican begged to differ. Sam R...

The question of referendums has arisen in connection with civil unions. The yeas and nays, naturally, are polarized. Once a question has been proposed and answered, sure as shooting there will be polarization – even if the question is: Should there be non-binding referendums? Decisions of any kind are necessarily divisive. Once I’ve decided that binding referendums may or may not be advisable, I have courted opposition from everyone who believes that my decision – whatever it may be – is wrong. Once I’ve decided to leave my house and travel to a store to buy shoes, I have set my face against those who believe it would be much better for cows if I should go barefooted. An artful distaste for polarization – as if any chosen course of action may be implemented in a democracy without divisions – has caused supporters of civil unions and marriage for gays to argue that even a non-binding referendum on the question of “civil unions” would be needlessly divisive. Non-binding referendums, it h...