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Love Makes a Family: Its Job Done, CT Gay-Rights group Disbands (Hartford Courant)
Thursday, April 2, 2009
By: Daniela Altimari
After working for a decade to change public policy and opinion regarding same-sex couples, the state's most prominent gay-rights group is calling it quits. And that, say its supporters, is a good thing.
"We accomplished our core purpose," Anne Stanback,
executive director of Love Makes a Family, said
Wednesday, "and we want to end on a high note."
Surrounded by supporters and standing next to a
large photograph of two men in tuxedos slicing a wedding
cake, Stanback announced the group's decision to
dissolve at year's end. It will still maintain a political action
committee to support certain candidates.
Formed in 1999 to push for legislation permitting same-sex
couples to adopt children, the group quickly became the
public face of the movement to win what it calls
"marriage equality" for gays and lesbians.
Its major victory came in October, when the state
Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case that denying
marriage to same-sex couples violates their constitutional
rights. The lawsuit was brought by the Boston-based Gay
and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, but Love
Makes a Family was instrumental in winning the support
of politicians and the public.
Stanback and the group's other leaders helped shift
public opinion through a strategy that focused on
the similarities between same-sex and heterosexual
couples. A Quinnipiac University poll taken two months
after the court ruling found broad support for same-sex
marriage.
"The barriers they've pushed through have had an
impact on so many people," said Lori Pelletier, an official
with the Connecticut AFL-CIO labor organization who was
united with her partner in a civil union in 2006 and
plans to marry her soon. "They were able to take this
issue ... and make it personal."
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