To some members, a vote by the Connecticut Bar Association’s Board of Governors last week to join the legal fight for federal benefits for same-sex couples was a not-to-be-missed opportunity to weigh in, as CBA president Barry Hawkins put it, “the civil rights question of our decade.”
To others, it was an unwelcome step into activism for a bar association that has traditionally avoided taking stands on potentially divisive political issues. “This is a departure,” said attorney John L. Bonee III, of Bonee Weintraub in West Hartford. “The CBA always said, ‘We don’t want to be like the ABA. We don’t want to get involved in social causes and lose members.’”
