When you think of wingnuts in Maine, most of us think of Paul LePage. But apparently there’s a crew that’s even crazier than LePage. A group of hyperfundie Christians wants to shred Maine’s civil rights protections for its LGBT residents and make homosexuality a crime.
The effort is led by two of Maine’s most prominent homophobes, Mike Heath and Paul Madore. At a press conference held at the Maine State House in Augusta, they announced an effort to persuade voters to remove sexual orientation from the state’s human rights law. Watch coverage from WMTW in Portland here.
Heath leads Helping Hands Ministries, while Madore is a longtime conservative Catholic activist. They announced the formation of “Equal Rights, Not Special Rights,” which aims to get a referendum on the ballot that would shred a 2005 measure that extended civil rights protections to LGBT Mainers. According to Equality Maine, if Heath and Madore get their way, it would be legal to “fire someone from their job, deny them housing, or kick them out of a restaurant just because of who they are.”
The title of their effort is very telling of how backwards Heath, Madore, and their friends are. Back in the 1990s, when gays wanted an end to the blatantly discriminatory measures they faced, fundies whined that they were demanding “special rights.”
Also pretty telling is who is on the advisory committee. Scott Lively, best known for his anti-gay activism in Uganda, is a member. So is Brian Camenker, another member of a very exclusive club–social conservatives in New England. Camenker once admitted that bans on same-sex marriage were based on longstanding bans on interracial marriage.
Heath made no bones about his ultimate goal–he wants to make homosexuality illegal. He claimed that “there is conduct that ought to be punished,” and according to the Bible, “sodomy is such a behavior.” Just in case Heath wasn’t quite clear enough, his group reiterated this point in its mission statement.
“Immorality cannot be the basis of law. When individuals or groups choose to do evil they are choosing to do something unlawful. All sex outside of marriage is wrong. Legal rights for individuals or groups who choose evil are special — especially evil — not equal. We are Christians who want to preserve equal rights not special rights. The desire for sex separated from the possibility of procreation is evil.”
For now, anyway, Heath wants to roll back civil rights protections for LGBT Mainers in order to put “a behavior that belongs in the closet back into the closet.” Madore agrees, saying that expressions of affection by gays are “totally out of line for a country as great as the United States of America.” He claims that he and other fundies are being “painted into a corner” by this nation’s growing acceptance of gays.
Heath and Madore also took a swipe at the Christian Civic League of Maine, accusing them of being squishes for not pushing hard enough to shred LGBT rights. Indeed, many of those standing at the press conference are former Christian Civic League leaders. Heath, who served as the league’s executive director until resigning in 2009, accused his former colleagues of forsaking their duty to “protect the family from gay debauchery.” Using similar language, Madore claimed the league had “aborted its mission” to defend family values in Maine.
Matt Moonen, the interim executive director of EqualityMaine, was on hand for the press conference and found himself rolling his eyes. Moonen, who is also a state representative, said this type of ham-handed discrimination is “not what the State of Maine is.” He is confident that there are “large majorities” in favor of marriage equality.
I have to agree. The 2005 measure was actually a “people’s veto” of the legislature’s decision to add sexual orientation to the state human rights law. The voters favored keeping the measure in place by some 55 percent. This was during a time when same-sex marriage bans were popping up like weeds. With acceptance of gay rights having grown since then, it’s likely that if this measure gets on the ballot, it will lose by a similar margin.
Heath’s team plans to have canvassers at 500 polling stations around the state this November, in hopes of getting their measure on the ballot for the 2018 statewide election. EqualityMaine needs your help to stop this attempt to write discrimination back onto the books. Click here to donate.
