Episode 16: A Fight For Legislative Change in Connecticut

Website: Family Institute of Connecticut
http://www.ctfamily.org

This is a podcast for those who love to talk common sense about everyday issues. You will listen to a variety of guests that share common sense ideas through their life experiences by sharing what they learned. For any comments, questions or suggestions for future topics, please contact the show at: stand4commonsense@outlook.com
Song title: Upbeat Indie Folk Music
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay

Transcript

Mizzy M: 0:16

Hi. Welcome to another episode of Podcast From the Edge Talking Common Sense. This is your host, Manju, otherwise known as Mizzy M. In today's podcast, I'll be talking with Peter from The Family Institute of Connecticut about what they are doing in terms of trying to influence legislation. So thank you very much for tuning in today. And I hope you enjoy the show. His name is Peter Wolfgang from The Family Institute of Connecticut Peter, would you like to say a few words about yourself?

Peter: 0:54

Well, Manju, first of all, thank you so much for, uh, having me on your podcast. I can tell you at the Family Institute of Connecticut, We love Moms for Liberty. Um, I was at, uh, my wife and I, Leslie, we were at CPAC last year in 2022, and there was this breakout session that was presided over by, um, Terry Schilling of the American Principals Project. And his, uh, it was, it was about parental rights in the schools, which of course is a topic that is, is within our wheelhouse. I'll explain more about Family Institute. We do a lot of different things, but that's a big one for us. And, uh, so we were in the, and frankly, cpac, I don't think really. Um, did a lot on some other issues that are important to us, so I was glad that they did that. Terry Shilling did a great job and the panelists were women from Moms for Liberty, and they were, you know, they were from Virginia. They could talk about Governor Youngin's victory and you know, the role they played there and what they're doing around the country. In defense of children's innocence in the schools. So, um, it, it was just a, it was a very powerful experience. There was, um, a young woman in the audience who was on the, the side of the transgender agenda, and I just remember how well Terry Schilling and the women from Moms for Liberty dealt with this person and gave a strong sense of, look, those of you who suffer with gender dysphoria, our hearts go out to you. You're not our real adversary, our real adversary. Are a big pharma. It's the schools, it's the people who in some way are profiting on this, this incredible scientific experiment, uh, on our children that I think will go down in the history books someday as just a, a, a dark thing, like other horrible scientific experiments, uh, uh, went terribly wrong on people in, in past years. That's how they're, we're gonna look back on this someday. So it was great to meet you. You and I met at the Connecticut Republican Assembly. Um, the convention, uh, not that long ago where Eric Metaxas was the main speaker. So it was great to know that, uh, about the good work that you're doing and that, um, you know, that Moms For Liberty has a chapter here. So that's, I I just wanted to get that out of the way. And you asked about the Family Institute of Connecticut. Um, yeah,

Mizzy M: 3:17

I wanted to know what started you and your wife to, uh, start this organization. What do you see that this organization be like, let's say 15 to 20 years down the road?

Peter: 3:30

Sure. So we did not start the Family Institute of Connecticut. It was started in 1989. Um, your listeners may have heard of Focus on the Family. And Dr. James Dobson. Yes, he was. Um, yeah, he's very important when we talk about the history of, um, family rights, of parental rights, uh, nationally. Dr. James Dobson in the 1970s founded an organization called Focus on the Family. He was very concerned about the decline in marriage and family life. In the United States after the sexual revolution, after the age of Aquarius in the 1960s and seventies, and by about the late 1980s, it became clear that a lot of these battles for the family were going to be won or lost. At the state level, in the state capitals. So they began working with people on the local level in the 50 states, focused on the family. Began to encourage the founding of what are called Family policy councils, FPCs, and. Ours here in Connecticut was founded in 1989 by a group of evangelical clergymen in Windsor, Connecticut. And uh, that's when Family Institute of Connecticut was founded, 1989. There were several executive directors before me. I was hired to be the director of public policy in, uh, 2004, um, and I became executive director in 2007. So I've been the executive director for, Gosh, about 16 years now. And as to your question about, you know, although we didn't found it, you regarding why my wife and I got involved in it, in this work, you know, I'm from Connecticut. I'm a Connecticut native, born and raised in Manchester, Connecticut, just outside of Hartford. My dad's from Hartford. My mom grew up in Manchester, went to the same high school that I did about 20, 25 years earlier than me. Um, so I grew up here and I had basically all the same values of everyone else in New England in the Northeast. I was secular, I was liberal. My politics were pretty much the same as all my friends growing up. My worldview, um, really.

Mizzy M: 5:46

I did not know that about you.

Peter: 5:48

Okay. I was president of the College Democrats at American University in the early nineties. I, um, you know, in high school in Manchester, I was part of a, um, peace group. We used to protest every Saturday what we considered to be Mr. Reagan's arms race. I had back goodness. Then I had, yeah, I had a beard. I had hair down to my shoulders back when I could still grow hair. I was a, I was a teammate.

Mizzy M: 6:12

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Wow.

Peter: 6:15

And I, I think what turned me around there was always something that was sort of like a wedge between me and my friends. I was with them on everything except. Issue and that issue was abortion. No matter how liberal I was on everything else, I was always pro-life. And my dad was, uh, my dad was Jewish. In fact, we, on that side of my family, I'm almost what they call a red diaper baby. My, my great uncle used to run in radical circles in the 1930s, um, in New York. And, uh, my mom. It was like she's Portuguese Catholic. Her family hails from New Bedford and um, I was brought up Catholic, but like nominal, you know, we went to c c D, we made all the sacraments, my brothers and me, but we didn't really go to mass, uh, on Sunday. We were pretty much Christmas and Easter Catholics. It was not until. I was a teenager and going through confirmation that I started, I started going to mass regularly, um, on my own on Sundays, and that began a process that didn't really reach fr fruition or blossom, um, until several years later. I was still. You know, my politics were those of the left. But again, the one thing, and maybe this was my Catholic upbringing, where I I differed from my friends was abortion. And I think what caused that to become a bigger wedge between them and me was in the 1990s, the issue of partial birth abortion. Now, Roe versus Wade had come down when I was three years old. So the, the, the legalization of abortion is something that had always been there. In my lifetime. Um, and I was always against it, but I always felt like my friends who are liberal, it's just, it's some sort of intellectual error on their parts. They just don't know that those of us who are liberal, we're, we're the compassionate ones, we're the ones that are for the underdog. It's those big meanings. The conservatives, they should be pro, pro-choice. We should be the pro-lifers. And I thought if I could just explain that to them, you know, we could get this straightened out. Right. But then in the nineties there was one particular aspect. Of the abortion issue, partial birth abortion. That became big news because the Republicans took over Congress so they could actually finally like, push through pro-life legislation. And the partial birth abortion, um, issue was amazing because what that is, is it's a particular type of procedure where you take a child very late in, in the p. Grab the child by the feet. Pull. Pull the child first feet, feet first outta the woman. Leave the child's head in there. Stick something into the back of the child's head. Crush the suck out, the brains, crush the skull and pull the now dead child out. That's why they call it partial birth abortion. The child's partly born only The heads there. It was very obviously infanticide. And when I discovered that all my pro-abortion friends supported even. That's where they lost me. That's where they lost me. It was really kind of an aha moment. Something clicked. Mm-hmm. I began to read deeply into conservative philosophy, theology, politics. I was, uh, my wife and I were both students at Yukon Law School at the time when I met her. And, uh, when I was going through all this, she was an atheist when I met her. She was, I was a pro-life liberal. She was a pro-choice atheist. My, my God. Yeah, no, she eventually, we both kind of had conversions, uh, that were kind of parallel, if not overlapping. Um, so I became, you know, I became much more serious about my Catholic faith. At one point I was like a liberal dissenting Catholic. I eventually became a more orthodox conservative Catholic. I kind of read my way into the faith, John Paul ii. GK Chesterton, John Henry Newman. Um, I read a lot of great writers who impressed me very much, and so after all that coming out, the other end of that, While I was still in law school, what I wanted to do was give my life to the cause, to the pro-life and pro-family. Cause I wanted to go down to Washington, DC and work for the Family Research Council. And, uh, lo and behold, I discovered shortly after law school. That there's a local chapter of that movement here in Connecticut. There's something called The Family Institute of Connecticut. They had just hired my predecessor. I read an article about him in The Hartford Courant. I reached out to him and we worked together. I, I came up with this project where we were gonna do a petition against same-sex marriage, and at the time I was the. I was a district deputy for the Knights of Columbus, and I was able to orchestrate a relationship between the Knights and the Family Institute and the Catholic Bishops of Connecticut where we did a petition drive in all the churches. We got about a hundred thousand signatures, um, for the defense of marriage back in like 2002 or three. This was about 20 years ago, and that's what really kicked off my career. And so I was hired by Family Institute. I became executive director about 15, 16 years ago. We are the group that led the fight for traditional marriage in Connecticut. We won that fight every year at the Capitol. Uh, marriage was only redefined by judicial fiat in the courts, and even then we went back to the state capitol. And secured some of the strongest religious liberty exemptions against same sex marriage in the entire country. All the horrible predictions that we made, and then some have come true. That's why we have to fight the transgender agenda in the schools now. And all these, we warn that this would lead to changes in curricula. Attacks on parental rights attacks, on religious freedom. And of course, everything we predicted has come true. So we fought several religious liberty battles right after, uh, marriage was redefined. We've been stopping assisted suicide for a decade. Um, but it's like fighting terrorists. We have to win every time. They only have to win once. And so we're in that fight again this year in 2023. We've defended the crisis pregnancy centers. And, and this gets to where we overlap with you guys. We are very involved in defending parental rights in the schools.

Mizzy M: 12:22

Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to also ask you was, you had a big score from this past week with SB 1 would you like to, um, let them. Let the audience know exactly what was SB 1 and why did you fight so hard for, thank you so much.

Peter: 12:41

Yes, thank you for mentioning that. That was a huge victory and we are out there right now on everything. Abortion, assisted suicide, you know, you name it. Uh, but parental rights is a very big one for us in SB one Senate Bill One is a bill that would've mandated comprehensive sex education. In all the districts, all the public school districts in Connecticut. Now, look, we know that this stuff's already going on in the schools in Connecticut, but it's not mandated. And you know, if a, if a liberal town like West Hartford, you know, if the parents there really don't care if they're kindergarten kids are, um, are being exposed to transgenderism, there's not a lot you can do about it. But I mean, if a town like Goshen, if there's a conservative town. That, uh, doesn't want their stuff, their kids exposed to this stuff. They ought to have the right to not be forced by the state to do it. And there's 169 towns in Connecticut, and most of them don't want this. I don't even know really, that the parents in West Hartford want it. I don't know how many of them even know this is happening. So the last thing we want is to take away the right of towns or parents to say, No community standard supply, you're not gonna do this in my town. SB 1 would've taken that right away from them. It would've mandated comprehensive sex ed. The standards that are set by the, um, the Connecticut Board of Education, which right now are guidelines, they're not mandates. This would've been a mandate. This would've required, and for instance, if they had applied the Connecticut Board of Ed Standard. Like as kids, as early as four years old, it would've been the job of the teacher that is someone not the parent, to explain the scientific terms for your child's genitals. So like, you know, some stranger, some teacher would've been explaining to your four-year-old, well, what, you know, what, what the, what you have as a boy is a penis. And that's not the job of teachers. That's the. Of parents at that young and, and um, very vulnerable age. I mean, I don't know how you can avoid the fact that this is some sort of weird groomer's bill. And if we didn't speak up, it would've passed at third grade. Um, the teachers would've had to teach the kids about masturbation at, uh, 11 year old. They would've had to start teaching them about puberty blockers. Interestingly, puberty blockers is in there about that age, not before and not. Why? Because they wanna catch 'em right as they're hitting puberty. Right? Um, and it, you know what, what's going on? The medical profession in this country. It's like something out of Dr. Manley and the Nazis. I mean, these experiments that they're doing on children are outrageous. We've got numerous stories around the country where parents are basically being bullied and intimidated. By doctors who stand to make a lot of money off this from the insurance companies to say, gee, do you want, um, you got, you gotta let your, your daughter transition to a boy. Do you want, uh, otherwise she might commit suicide? Do you want a dead daughter or a live son? And of course, the parents who are desperate throw up their hands and agree to this stuff. And it's really horrible. It's really outrageous. We just. This week had the horrible story of this transgender identified person in Nashville, Tennessee, um, committing murder against nine year olds, and a few school administrators at a Christian school, a Presbyterian school in Nashville, Tennessee. I mean, these folks are, they're mentally ill, they're suicidal, and they need help. And the last thing you wanna. Is, uh, is, is put them in a position where they're gonna be an even greater danger to themselves and to others. And meanwhile, you've had, you know, you have people in high places in this country who have agendas, who are on Twitter telling the transgender people are already mentally ill people who are already taking foreign substances, hormone blockers, um, into their system telling. Christians wanna kill you. Christians wanna genocide you. So I'm not shocked, frankly, I'm, I am shocked and horrified, but I'm not surprised, unfortunately, sadly, that something like, uh, what happened at this Covenant Presbyterian school in Nashville eventually happened, and I think we're all in danger. I think there's a number of intersecting things happening in our society and our culture. There's a huge uptick in mental illness. There's a toxic brew of that in the internet. In social media, and we have people with agendas. I mean, I, I think, you know, um, Manchu, I, I feel like we crossed a line here during the pandemic where parents can now see, thanks to Zoom classes at home, nobody knew that this stuff was being taught in the schools. Now everybody knows, and there's a parental rights movement that's rising up and you know, the woke are they, they've been. Unprepared and they're freaking out and they wanna, all this stuff that they did to us when we fought same sex marriage 20 years ago, they're trying to do it again. They're trying to name, call and intimidate and shame. And this time I don't think it's working cuz now we're talking about people's children. 20 years ago it was kind of abstract. Gee, if two people love each other, Get married. How does that affect you? I don't think anyone has trouble today answering the, how does it affect you, question when kids are being trans against their parents will. So that's where we're at now. That's right. And I know you were briefly telling me before we even got started about the assisted suicide bill too. That's now up. Yes. So that is a grave concern of ours. Um, we have defeated assisted suicide for a decade. We formed a very un, of course, we are the religious right in the state of Connecticut. We've formed a very. Unusual coalition with elements of the progressive left with disability rights activists who agree with us on nothing, um, except that assisted suicide is bad public policy that puts vulnerable populations at risk. So what we wanna do is we wanna stop the state government here from making it. For doctors to prescribe suicide, lethal drugs as a treatment, and then grant immunity to the people that help you kill yourself for people with disabilities. They're concerned rightly that the right to die will become a duty to die. And we've seen this in states where it's legal, where insurance companies have said, Well, we don't wanna give you the drugs to keep on living. They're too expensive. But you know what? The suicide pills hardly cost anything. Would you like those instead? I mean, there are people who have gotten letters from their insurance companies saying that, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, you gotta be concerned about, um, you know, if you've got relatives who stand tan, inherit from you, that may have, if they're not good people, they may have a motive. To wanna hasten your death, and this is really one of the most AstroTurf issues I've ever seen. Because I mean, certainly there are some people that want this to be legal. They tend to be mostly wealthy people from wealthy communities who have always had control of their lives. You don't see a lot of black and Hispanic people demanding this. In fact, for the most part, you don't see a lot of demand for this at all. As much as I disagree with abortion or the L G B T agenda, I know that. Those are real movements. On the other hand, you don't see anyone marching in the street for the right to hasten their own death. This is a top-down thing by a very well-healed lobby, funded by George Soros that wants to become the Planned Parenthood of assisted suicide. They stand to make out in this big time, and, um, that's what we're up against. There's a population control agenda here, and, uh, it, it, it's very. And dangerous and people are not connecting the dots. And I, I do hope people will go to the, I hope your listeners will go to the Family Institute of Connecticut's website. It's ct family.org. Sh sign up for our emails, even if you're on our social media. Uh, or you're looking at our website. If you're not on our emails, you're missing about 80% of what we're up to, and we are up to a lot. My wife, Leslie, is now doing weekly webinars every Monday night at 7:00 PM with legislative updates. We're going to have. Two lobby days, sometime in the month of April, those are still being scheduled. Mm-hmm. But people should go to our website, sign up for our email alerts to get more information. Follow Family Institute of Connecticut. Action on Facebook, on Twitter. Look us up. Um, we're doing a lot. We're pretty much it. We're not alone. We have a, we have allies, particularly in the Connecticut Catholic Conference I mentioned, uh, our friends in the disability community. There are a lot of parental rights groups like your. That are out there. In fact, family Institute will be supporting those groups. Um, this Friday on March 31st at eight o'clock in the morning at Yukon Law School in Hartford, which is actually where my wife and I met. We're gonna protest. They, they're having a, uh, a symposium entitled, are Parental Rights Always In the Best Interest of Children? Right, exactly. And the postcard that they sent out, I mean, who knows, maybe, maybe it's an even-handed academic conference, I don't know. But the postcard that they sent out certainly did not give that impression. The postcard advertising, this gave the very strong impression. That, uh, the answer is no, that parental rights is getting in the way of the L G B T Q agenda and you know, I, I mean, Munk, the mask is off. These guys are not hiding the fact. That they're coming for our children. 20 years ago when we were fighting gay marriage, they were hiding that. They acted like we were crazy to say these things. But you know, there's this, um, there's this phrase that the writer Rod Dreyer came up with. He calls it the Law of Merited Impossibility. And it works like this. It will never happen. And when it does, you bigots will deserve. And that's what we've been suffering through. They told us that wouldn't happened, and then when it, when it did, they said, well, you guys are, are discriminatory anyway. So there, um, so you, you really can't trust the people on the other side. They're liars and the best thing we can do is exercise whatever rights are still available to us in this representative democracy and fight back again. I invite all your um, listeners to go to CT family.org. We'll have more information on all of this, and we're very grateful to be working closely with you and with Moms for Liberty.

Mizzy M: 23:13

Right. Which leads me to the question, I know you had said to go on your website and enroll in the newsletter and any sort of announcements that come on there. Is there anything else people in the state can do to help you attending rallies, let's say? You know, calling legislatures. Is there anything else? Any calls to action?

Peter: 23:35

Absolutely. If you go to our website, ct family.org, and you click on the section that says Action Center, right now we have about seven or eight action alerts. Some of these bills are very hot right now. I've mentioned assisted suicide several times. It's SB 10 76. It just made it onto the Senate calendar. Now it's probably gonna be sent to judiciary committee. We need people's help. To lobby the judiciary committee to stop the assisted suicide bill. Another bill that made it outta committee just yesterday is Senate Joint Resolution SJR 42, which would put the license, uh, to abortion, the right to abortion right into our state constitution. Um, so. You know, bad enough that it's still legal in Connecticut. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, they wanna put it into our state constitution. That means forget about ever passing a parental notification law or anything that, uh, people on both sides might be able to agree on. These are absolutely radical things. Go to ct family.org, click on the action alerts. We need your help. And come to my wife's, uh, Monday night webinars, which will, which is also listed at CT Family Dot. Where does she hold these lump webinars? Is it through Zoom, YouTube? It is through Zoom. And do we have to register? Yes. Yes. Okay. You have to register all, all the infos there.

Mizzy M: 24:57

Okay, great. If you can send me the link, I'll definitely post that up.

Peter: 25:02

Excellent. Thank you so much for having me on Manju. Yes.

Mizzy M: 25:05

And I wanted to ask one last question. What is the one piece of common sense you would like to share with the audience?

Peter: 25:12

Um, that you are the primary educator of your own child. Even if you send your child to a public school or a private. Or however, you know, whatever, um, third party you choose to delegate. Uh, some of, some of what you do with your child too. At the end of the day, you are the primary educator of your child. Nobody can take those rights away from you, not some doctor who's trying to pressure you. Not the state government, and certainly not the schools or teachers or the medical profession as long as you are, you know, obviously there are very, very extreme cases, outliers, but for almost everybody, it's you. You're, you are the one that's responsible for your child. And don't let anyone get between you and your child. You know what's best for your child, right?

Mizzy M: 26:03

That's right. Exactly. Well, thank you so much Peter, for taking your time to talk with us

Peter: 26:10

and thank you, Manju. My pleasure. I'm looking forward to working with you in the future. Likewise. Thank you.

Mizzy M: 26:16

Thank you.