keep the faith

Connecticut’s Dept. of Children & Families Scared Into Hiding Gay-Friendly Churches

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Know what’s harmful for struggling families in Connecticut? Learning which places of worship might be welcoming to the gays!

Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families pulled from its website links to gay-friendly churches after a complaint was lodged “over the separation of church and state.” And who submitted that complaint? That would be the Family Institute of Connecticut, an organization that — as if you have to guess — supports amending the state and federal constitution to ban same-sex marriage. (In its complaint, FIC was represented by Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice.)

Says FIC’s executive director Peter Wolfgang: “We said all along that if same-sex marriage was imposed in Connecticut, the next thing that would happen would be an effort to re-educate Connecticut children. That’s what today’s victory was all about: making sure they don’t try and re-indoctrinate children into accepting lifestyles and beliefs that their parents are utterly opposed to.”

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We took a look around the DCF website and couldn’t find links to other churches (read: non-gay-friendly), so it appears the agency is at least uniform in its policies. The site still has a link to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender National Youth Talkline.

But if DCF is going to to yank gay-friendly organizations — under the guise of keeping church and state separate — shouldn’t they review the link to the Boy Scouts of America, which actively discriminates against gays? (At least there’s no link to the gay demon exorcism church Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport.)

Meanwhile, since DCF won’t do it, here’s a great reference for Connecticut families who do want a church that’s welcoming to everyone.

But we’re still on the fence: We certainly want families to have as much information at their disposal about support services, but do we draw the line at faith? If the DCF website linked to anti-gay churches, would we be calling for those to be pulled? Is linking to a church website a
tacit endorsement of the faith, or merely providing a resource? And can a couple hyperlinks qualify as using taxpayer dollars to cross the church-state line?

(Thanks, PS!)

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