Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

This is the stuff of which sociological studies are made. A gentleman was shot in a bar after an altercation involving a woman. The gentleman was laid to rest, and the usual obsequies were observed. In attendance at the funeral were the four women with whom the gentleman once had intimate relations, along with the gentleman’s twelve children. The gentleman was not married to any of the four mothers of his children, all of whom who spoke in glowing terms of the deceased as a wonderful father and a “good family man.” The occasion, featured on the front page of a state-wide Connecticut newspaper, produced the expected stir, and in due course a letter appeared in the paper written by a lady of liberal persuasion. “Over the years,” the aggrieved correspondent wrote, “I have come to accept a broadening definition of marriage and the family.” Connecticut is now on the legislative brink of broadening the definition of “family” to include persons of the same gender, and a stretcher bill extendi...