|
Special to Dirigo Blue, Karen Ocamb is a journalist in southern California, and covered last summers fight over Proposition 8, the ballot measure that nullified a ruling by that State's Supreme Court allowed same-sex couples to marry. I thank her for this informative and thorough history of the Prop 8 campaign, and what it may portend for Maine. You can donate to NO on 1 at their website here.
The Religious Right is Swiftboating Same Sex Marriage in Maine
By Karen Ocamb
News editor, Frontiers in LA
"God has no grandchildren," the evangelical ex-Marine father of my late friend Chip Howe said, explaining how he surrendered judgment and came to accept Chip's homosexuality. Chip, a Lieutenant in the Navy during the Vietnam War, was supposed to get married and provide his parents with grandchildren. Chip's father thought being gay meant that would never happen.
That was in 1990, before there was any real hope for marriage rights for same sex couples. Though Chip had known love before he died, he never got to experience the fruition of his constitutional right to pursue happiness - marriage and a family of his own.
The story is instructive because Religious Right professionals have succeeded in making it appear as if all people of faith are antigay and anti-marriage equality. Worse yet, they are using religion as an excuse to perpetrate lies and deception - to swiftboat same sex couples in the name of God, when in fact they are just advancing another end-justifies-the-means political scheme.
That's what happened in California and that's what is now underway in Maine as opponents of same sex marriage fight to prevent Maine's marriage equality law from taking effect though a referendum on the Nov. 3 ballot.
State Sen. Larry Bliss (D-South Portland) got to the heart of the issue in his Sept. 28 op-ed response to Rev. Bob Emrich's Aug. 26 Maine Voices column advocating passage of the anti-gay Question 1.
Bliss wrote:
"Do we want a Maine where Rev. Emrich and his supporters tell the rest of us who can be a family and who can love whom?
Marriage equality upholds traditional Maine values of personal freedom and equality by respecting the right of every Mainer to marry the person he or she loves.
That's the Maine I live in. Those are the values I hold dear."
There's more:
|
DIRIGO BLUE is available as an