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In the face of overwhelming odds, Family Institute of Connecticut Action and our supporters rallied and won on many levels this session. There is so much to report, it is difficult to get to it all. Let’s count down the TOP THREE notable items from the 2025 session . . .
Notably, we preserved the ability to challenge school and local library books in Connecticut. Challenges based on sexually explicit and pervasively vulgar content may still be made. Bill provisions that unfairly and unjustly targeted parents for legal prosecution were also removed from the proposed legislation. Targeting parents with lawsuits for objecting to porn given to their own children – disgraceful. Thankfully, we were able to get those provisions out, but below are the original co-sponsors. These legislators thought, and probably still do think, it was a good idea for parents to be sued for the “emotional distress” of a challenged librarian (Sec. f of SB 1217) or ok for parents to be blocked from even challenging books about “butt plugs” in school libraries . .
Unfortunately, local school boards must adopt policies, but those policies can restrict and remove materials that do not align with educational values, are obscene, sexually explicit, vulgar and more. This is a major victory against bills championed by two extremist and powerful Democrats and well-funded, organized, Marxist, LGBTQIA+, radical organizations.
But something has also changed in CT with this bill and we could not stop it. Only local residents can now challenge library books. And, in violation of due process and equal protection rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, those books may only be challenged by one parent of a currently enrolled child, once every three years. This radical law will block citizens from participating in the democratic process. See how your legislators voted in the Committee on Children, Education Committee, in the House and Senate. Find out who your legislator is HERE. A YEA vote for these bills was a vote AGAINST parental rights and against robust protections of vulnerable children exposed to sexually explicit content in libraries . . .
A book also cannot be removed because of a “viewpoint expressed” – whatever that means. It is overly vague and unconstitutional. We were there that night and legislative leaders were unwilling to say exactly what “viewpoint expressed” exactly means – are you surprised? We are doing a full analysis of the legislative history and will follow up with policy recommendations as these new library policies are debated and implemented across Connecticut.
Due to resistance by the Family Institute of Connecticut Action and our members, the worst provisions were removed from the multiple original library bills. No more legal persecution of parents by librarians for objecting to porny book selections they put in kids libraries; and no more unlimited, unilateral protections for books that teach “anal, oral and vaginal” sex instruction masquerading as “health material” to children as young as 3rd grade.
Parents – make no mistake, removing library books based solely on LGBTQIA+ ideological content may be more difficult now. But, you also have Constitutional rights recognized in a recent Supreme Court Decision (more on that later). You must, as always, remain vigilant – including emphasizing to your children the sex binary, rejoice in their being a girl or a boy, teach them to anticipate puberty, and most importantly . . . be the first and primary teacher of your children about the dangers of gender ideology. Be frank and tell them that there are people who prey on vulnerable children. Be the first expert your children need you to be.
Our members rallied for the innocence of children and defense of democracy . . . testifying for hours and into the evening during the two very long public hearings and sending thousands of messages to legislators and being a public witness against the bills. We actually won on the day the vote was scheduled in the Senate! The library bill was withdrawn and we won during the normal legislative process.
But Senator Bob Duff and legislative leaders disgracefully snuck the very long and non-financial bill into the budget. We stood very little chance of defeating the bill once that happened and shame on the legislature and the Governor for evading the democratic process in order to pass an exceedingly unpopular bill.
But we took a pound of flesh.
From the floor of the House, Representative Anne Dauphinais – our 2025 Stetson Awardee – dropped multiple truth bombs during the debate. Maybe you don’t believe what I am talking about. Many people cannot believe what legislators like Senators Bob Duff and Ceci Maher try to protect in our school libraries, so read it for yourself HERE (explicit content warning). For 20 minutes, she calmly and clearly read excerpts from books in CT school libraries. Books that include sexually explicit and deplorable passages currently available even in elementary school libraries in Connecticut. I was watching from the viewing platform and saw as Representative Dauphinais’ testimony sent physical shock waves of gasps and pearl-clutching across the floor of the House as she read from those books.
Astonishingly, she was prevented from continuing to read excerpts of books meant for our children . . . because adult ears were burning. Her speech was banned and she had to edit the excerpts as she was speaking on the floor. She was brilliant and our organization is extremely proud of her and the other Republicans who supported her efforts in the House and Senate. Her heroic speech and subsequent silencing became national news and we applaud her advocacy and witness for common sense in Connecticut.
There were several bills this session to expand gender ideology in Connecticut. This pervasively insipid ideology substitutes scientific sex definitions like “male and female” for self-referential and innumerable “genders”. According to Representative Gilchrest on the floor of the House of Representatives, in response to a line of questioning by Representative Fishbein, there are “infinite” numbers of genders. INFINITE! This is the lunacy we are up against in CT and the majority of the Democrat controlled legislature just meekly goes along with the radicals in their party – to the detriment of children in our state.
A bit about gender.
Our legislature’s majority has gone full Queer Ideology. At its root, Queerism seeks the dismantling of all norms, particularly the family. As the family is weakened, the State steps in and power/agency/authority is transferred away from local families/towns/cities to state/national level ne’er-do-wells. This alluring ideology has led the majority party in CT to disrupt the family by replacing many laws that were based on sexual reality – reality based on a body’s intended design to produce large or small gametes – with gender nonsense. For example, in CT, the word “mother” gets targeted each year for deletion in law – replaced by “birthing person” or “pregnant person”. The majority usually goes along with this nonsense and we would never stop it except for a hardy band of no-nonsense Democrats and Republicans who oppose it.
Unfortunately, “gender” is no longer just a polite synonym for the word “sex”. “Gender” is based on someone’s internal sense of conformity with society’s current sex stereotypes. What used to simply be gender-non-conforming or falling outside of sex-stereotypes – something we all do at some point during our lives – is now considered by many to be a separate category of person (a “transgender” person) and a protected class in Connecticut. Someone’s conformity or lack of conformity cannot simply be an interesting fact anymore – we, including our children, are expected to acknowledge it even to the point of lying. It’s navel-gazing, pseudo-science quackery and should be cast aside as the silly, impractical and untenable belief system it is.
Unfortunately, our institutions in Connecticut are still “all in”. The horrible effect has been to create a legion of insecure, hysterical, unstable and sad young people who can’t bear to even be “misgendered” – to be referred to as their actual sex. I sat next to several during the public hearing for the Constitutional amendment and they are seriously unwell and if this “gender affirming care” is the best treatment, then clinicians and doctors, you are snake-oil salesmen. These young adults were clutching teddy bears and shaking their legs so violently in their seats, that the entire row of chairs vibrated. They had to rush from the room and huddle outside in “safe zones”. We even got to hear from a mother who detailed the transitioning of her 2 year old child!
If it were just private self delusions, it wouldn’t be so bad, but gender/queer ideology is forced on our children in schools and includes the sanctioning of boys cheating and winning in girls sports events and even sharing private locker rooms in Connecticut. Not to mention tampons in 3rd grade boys bathrooms, legal protections for men in women’s private spaces and more. Hear me though, this type of legislation won’t pass again without a major legislative battle. Most notably for this year, the CT Constitutional Amendment to enshrine access to medicalized sex trait modifications like puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgeries for children was stopped despite all these well-funded organizations working for it . . .
It was not easy to defeat this year’s proposed Constitutional Amendment.
Here are the proud co-sponsors of the Constitutional Amendment for unlimited abortion at any gestational age, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and cross-sex surgeries for dysphoric minors.
Leslie Wolfgang and our team of testifiers were up against GLAD, CT ACLU, over a dozen public school teachers, Yale University, Reproductive Equity Now, Planned Parenthood, Equality Connecticut, Connecticut Psychological Association, Our Trans Life, Socialists and many more. These organizations are wrong about the medicalization of minors and so are the legislators who refuse to listen to opposition. Children have been hurt directly by the medicalization and indirectly by the ideology and a reckoning is slowly happening.
Many weekends and late nights were spent by FIC staff and volunteers to identify and analyze the bills, identify and arrange experts, prepare oral testimony, arrange transportation, draft and submit written testimony, private meetings with legislators, online and in-person testimony from around across the country and Connecticut including our own members and a hardy band of leftists, gays, lesbians and self-identified transsexual adults. These LGBT persons may disagree with FIC Action on all other matters, but they agree that medicalized sex-trait modifications, loss of fertility and long term health complications are not decisions for children to make in pursuit of a transient gender identity. We struck a blow and you can watch as Jamie Reed’s feed gets cut off for several minutes during her testimony. We are thankful for their help and the many FIC members, doctors, and legislators.
Make no mistake, this Amendment would have made it nearly impossible to ever return girls sports to girls in Connecticut. Later in the session we held our best-attended press conference with dozens of legislative supporters. We invited speakers from across the country and locally to demand that our state legislators pay attention and serve girls, not a ridiculous and damaging ideology.
Connecticut got a vote on Parental Notification of abortion in the House! This has been a long-standing goal of our movement and look here to see how your legislator voted: Yea or Nea for parental notification of a minor’s abortion. Find out who your legislator is HERE. Parental notification is simple, humane and effective to protect underage girls from sex trafficking – a real problem in Connecticut. Each “Y” vote was a vote for sensible and reasonable measures to protect women. We appreciate the strong leadership on both sides of the aisle this session to bring this matter for an official vote and record.
The success of our 2025 Connecticut March for Life, with over 3,000 attendees, paved the way for later pro-life successes. FIC Action and our education and legislative allies fought hard and saved Connecticut’s “Infants Born Alive” protections from erasure. Since last summer, abortion activists have had their hearts fixed to abandon infants born alive during an abortion and leave them to the “tender mercies” of the abortionist who just tried to kill them! We may have defeated the Department of Public Health’s secret and ham-handed regulation change to eliminate these protections initiated last year. But abortion activists have state money and don’t rest. The leadership of the Public Health Committee surreptitiously changed a bill hours before a Committee vote on HB 7213. They changed the bill to eliminate regulations protecting conscience protections and infants born alive. This, after denying this was their true intent the week before!
Below are the pro-abortion legislators who co-sponsored HB 7213. Don’t forget Representatives Gilchrest and Martinez, who moved its passage in the Public Health Committee. After winning by 443 votes, Representative Martinez took office in January, 2025. She represents Plainville, which includes parts of Farmington and Southington. She is one of the newest pro-abortion legislators at the State Capitol and a proponent of extremist abortion positions along with Representative Jillian Gilchrist and the “Reproductive Rights Caucus”.
You had to be there the night of the debate and we are so proud of some amazing Republican women who stood strong for several hours in Committee to advocate for sensible protections for women and the unborn. We and FIC members were there all that day and into the night and staged our biggest rally inside the Capitol Building on abortion in years when it came up for a vote in the House – and we won. We filled the gallery of the House and protected infants and women against abortion expansion. Abortion is unfortunately one of our legislature’s highest values and we will continue to be there, with God’s help and our members to protect all life in Connecticut.
Our legislative battles were not not cheap – each one required professional legal analysis, talking points, amendments, questions for debate, written and oral testimony, e-mails, stickers, graphic design, flyers, paid lobbyists, promotional material, opinion editorials, advertising, coordination of volunteers, webinars, church outreach and social media – we could not do it alone. Please consider a generous donation to our summer matching grant which will help us stay afloat and ready for continued vigilance in Connecticut this year.
