Same-sex marriage rights have been a hot-button topic of late with California passing Proposition 8 and nullifying the 2005 same-sex marriage bill, Iowa and Vermont legalizing gay marriage this past month and now New York and New Hampshire considering their own state laws in support of gay marriage.
The call for action has not gone unheard in Maine. Equality Maine, based out of Portland, is the state's oldest and largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy organization and the only political advocacy program in the state. The group rallied statewide, calling on supporters to attend the April 22 hearing that took place at the Augusta Civic Center for Democratic Senator Dennis Damon's bill (LD 1020), which if passed, would provide legal protections for same-sex couples in Maine.
"It has been our mission for 25 years to affect public policy in Maine," said Betsy Smith, Executive Director at Equality Maine. They are working closely with the Maine Freedom to Marriage Coalition, a group of 34 Maine based organizations in helping to make this bill a reality, and to offer protection to same-sex couples.
Two groups of participants were organized in support: those who testified in front of the Judicial Committee, and the much larger group of people who came —dressed in various shades of red clothing — to show their support. "We've asked couples who will be effected by this law, who currently don't have protection to raise their families in a healthy and secure way, to testify. We also have what we call content experts," she continues, "including child welfare advocates and the AACP." The content experts stressed the benefit marriage has on children, regardless of the parents' sexual preference, while other testimonies were based on personal experience.
Opposition was also on hand to voice their disagreement to the proposed bill. Many from religious backgrounds quoted The Bible as deeming homosexuality as a sin and same-sex marriage as unholy as their main arguments.
Other religious leaders noted the danger in quoted The Bible too closely. Casey Collins of the Lewiston Methodist Church was quoted in the Lewiston Sun Journal as saying, "If the Bible is taken word for word as it is written, adultery would be punished by death by stoning as would a woman getting married who is not a virgin. No one to my knowledge has recently been stoned to death for adulterous acts."
In a country whose Forefather’s wrote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
It seems that the answer to whether this bill should or should not be passed was already answered on July 4, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence states that “…all men (and women) are created equal…” Then why should a minority lack the same protections and rights from their government than the majority? That is not equality, that is discrimination.
The argument that The Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and is therefore wrong should be completely disregarded in a political arena based on the saying attributed to Thomas Jefferson in regards to the First Amendment of The United States Constitution: Separation of church and state. If church and state are to be separate, then why bring religion into the argument at all?
April 28 is the earliest the Judiciary Committee is expected to vote. If approved, it still needs to go to the Senate, the House and then to Governor Baldacci.
Here’s to a tolerant America.
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