Autumn and I have been passing on right-wing reaction yesterday’s historic Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality in California, but I wanted to reserve a post for this unique reaction from fundie Mike Heath of the Christian Civic League of Maine.
He’s basically cried uncle in terms of protecting the word “marriage,” and wants to get back to basics, which sounds a lot like extermination, if you ask me. Homos have been compared to all sorts of things, but I don’t think I’ve been referred to as a weed polluting a lawn. Via email from Blender Herb, who’s on the CCLM mailing list:
Some people are suggesting that California’s ridiculous Supreme Court decision on “marriage” yesterday is reason to renew Maine’s push for a constitutional amendment. Those people are dead wrong.And Mike’s apparently found yet another version of The Homosexual Agenda. See his discovery below the fold.While I support any real efforts to amend the Federal Constitution to protect marriage, I don’t support a Maine constitutional amendment at this time. Anyone who has been paying attention to this issue in Maine for the past two decades knows that the entire Maine political establishment is in “love” with “gay” special interests.
The fight is over if we are going to protect the word marriage only. Most recommendations I hear for constitutional amendments will protect only the word marriage, and allow for civil unions and domestic partnerships. A cursory reading of the Massachusetts and California court decisions will reveal the folly of this approach.
We must attack this problem at its root. If you want to get rid of a weed you don’t pull off the leaves. You destroy the root. The root idea of so-called same sex marriage is special rights for citizens on the basis of sexual wrongdoing. That is where the fight must be engaged.
Our only hope in the short term is the people. If everyone will get behind the League’s referendum we can begin the process of righting the ship of state more quickly.
I call on all people of good will to support our referendum today. It is the loving thing to do. Let’s support marriage and equality. We can’t afford to wait.
Where are they getting our classified information?
1. What is the gay rights movement?And dammit, who is the mole turning over info about our action plan to Heath?The gay rights movement is a highly-organized and disciplined effort to radically transform law, politics, culture, and society in general. Although there are many aspects to the gay rights movement, the most important aspect to consider at the present time is the effort to gain legal status for societal relationships based on homosexuality, in particular, same-sex marriage and so-called ‘gay adoption.’
2. What is the origin of the gay rights movement?
The gay rights movement, contrary to common belief, is not a new phenomenon. The first gay rights movement of which we have a record was the social upheaval in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Bible scholars have pointed out that the events in Sodom and Gomorrah have many parallels in modern times, and these include the tumultuous gatherings of vocal advocates of homosexuality and an insistence on imposing one’s views on others. Recent demonstrations in major American cities, with Christians barricaded behind doors, while crowds of unruly “gay” activists protested in the streets, are very reminiscent of the Biblical account of the events in Sodom and Gomorrah.
The problem we face today:Whoever is the leak, return your toaster pronto!
- Several states are considering the sanction of homosexual marriages.
- Gay couples are granted the privileges of married partners when it comes to insurance
coverage.
- There are laws prohibiting the “discrimination” of homosexuals.
- The military has a “Don’t ask … don’t tell” policy.
- Christians are being labeled as “homophobics”, and criticized when they exercise their free speech rights in opposition to homosexuality, as being uncaring, unloving, judgmental, and hateful.
- Gay-Rights parades are being promoted on city streets.
- There is a “Gay Day” at Disney World.
- It is politically incorrect to be against homosexuality, and doing so can jeopardize a political career.
- The Boy Scouts of America were criticized, and lost funding, because they refused to accept an openly gay Scoutmaster.
- Television programs are rampant with gay issues - new programs regularly emerge with openly gay characters, gay makeovers, etc. They are being portrayed as NORMAL.
- The American Psychological Association has threatened to revoke the license of any psychologist or psychiatrist who counsels a homosexual to change his lifestyle.
- Sex change therapies on children are being offered.
***
A reminder that the Blend has also received endorsements from the CCLM. Heath’s colleague Mike Hein was enthusiastic:
The Christian Civic League of Maine’s Mike Hein calls Pam’s House Blend:
“a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy.”
He is “praying that Pam Spaulding will “turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior.”
(CCLM’s web site, 10/15/07)
42 Responses to “Reality bites for Christian Civic League of Maine’s Mike Heath”
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“They are being portrayed as NORMAL.”
That’s really where his problem lies… he doesn’t want to think that these are people, just like him and everyone else he knows. Good, bad and indifferent, they are people. Normal people. And it’s really hard to get anyone to advocate witholding rights from normal everyday people.
People like him were far happier when all that people less exposed to GLBT saw was the Pride parades (which can get over the top on occasion). Those didn’t look “normal” to them, and could be pointed at… Hank and Mark paying bills on time and trying to afford life insurance… far less intimidating, far more relatable. Far bigger problem for bigots.
To which I say, keep up the good work (and good work to the blackops agent who managed to disseminate the false info above with a straight face… keep them on the crazy fence and we might be able to accomplish something while their backs are turned!)
But, wait, if the Gay Agenda ™ started in Sodom and Gomorrah, do we really have to do anything about it? Once homosexual behavior has hit the critical level, won’t everyone there be turned into a pillar of salt anyway?
So, what’s the big deal? Problem should take care of itself.
(Jesus. I cannot believe this guy is using Sodom and Gomorrah as a legitimate example of anything! There’s no reasoning involved with the whackadoodles anymore–nothing is fact-based in their world.)
And another aside–if Christians are so damned picked upon, marginalized and victimized, why does the spellchecker know that I misspelled “Gomorrah”? It’s not like people go around ‘gomorrah-izing’ all day. Hell, the spellchecker doesn’t even like that I didn’t capitalize it!
Such a shame that Christianity and it’s trappings are never accommodated.
Don’t worry too much about that weed comment … Mainers actually cultivate dandilions as a food crop. There will be no uprooting any time soon.
Recent demonstrations in major American cities, with Christians barricaded behind doors, while crowds of unruly “gay” activists protested in the streets, are very reminiscent of the Biblical account of the events in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Until these Christians offer their underage daughters to these gay rights protestors it just won’t be the same.
Yet another gay agenda? Damn, you people sure are busy!
“Until these Christians offer their underage daughters to these gay rights protestors it just won’t be the same.”
Don’t forget the part where they brutally murder those daughters later and try to blame it on the Gay Agenda (oh dear… I always worry when I say things like this that I might be giving some neanderthal somewhere an idea…)
You know, I spent my college years going to a liberal arts school in Maine, and to see these bigoted, and frankly dangerous, idiots trying to prevent Maine from becoming an even better State make me very very sad. I loved my time in Maine, and to see these people try to turn it into a state of hate, makes me very sad indeed. I spent four very important and influential years in Maine, I hope the Mainiacs I know and love will tell these bigots to just get out.
“The problems we face today: There are laws prohibiting the discrimination…”
Wow.
“The root idea of so-called same sex marriage is special rights for citizens on the basis of sexual wrongdoing.”
“Sexual wrongdoing” => Adult using a 12-year old for sexual purposes. Strangling her to death during the act. Doping people to get in their pants. Etc.
“Sexual wrongdoing” /=> Whatever consenting adults want to do with each other, regardless of the combination of genders, gender expressions, etc.
Why is that so hard for them to understand?…
Don’t worry too much about that weed comment … Mainers actually cultivate dandilions as a food crop.
The true scope of his solution is revealed.
Soylent Green … is gay people!
Oh noez!
Television programs are rampant with gay issues - new programs regularly emerge with openly gay characters, gay makeovers, etc. They are being portrayed as NORMAL.
I suspect Mr. Heath won’t be happy until TV programming looks like a Jack Chick cartoon. All non-white/non-fundamentalist/non-Republican/non-straight characters have to be horribly executed before the end of the show, then, just to make sure, the actor portraying the character has to be killed, to keep the Evil Gayness from getting out. After that, Mr. Heath will come out and primal-scream at the cameras until the closing credits are over.
I’ve never understood why the gay community wants to pick a fight on this issue. Christian marriage is a discredited notion, founded as it is on property and inheritance rites. Dunno about over there but in most of Europe it is the civil partnership that confers the legal status, not the business with the preacher. In Britain all Church of England clergy are authorised as registrars of weddings so they can do the legal bit.
All the hyms and vows mean nothing, people are not married til they do the legal bit. In France where there is separation of church and state, church marriage is a two stage process. But people who skip the church fiasco and just go to the town hall to sign the documents are just as married.
So if Californian gays would just accept civil partnership we in Europe would know they are as married as anybody. For those who want a religious aspect to their union, its down to the individual church involved.
Eating dandelions? Bleah! Tried it once and even with picking them early, those suckers are bitter.
Not this Mainer!
Ian, let’s put this as simply as possible:
marriage is a form of “special rights” for heterosexuals.
When you are married in the US, you gain some big ground on property and inheritance rights, partnership rights (e.g. visit an ailing spouse), the right to be on your spouse’s healthcare policy, to name a few.
It is a huge package of rights and benefits, not hymns and vows, that make it a contentious issue in the US.
Um, Ian, what we’re talking about is a system just like what they have in Britain. Alot of “Christian” homophobs just like to make up stuff about churches being “forced” to perform gay marriage so they can avocate against laws allowing civil marriage for gay people without appearing to do so. (This nut is just dispensing with the pretense).
“I’ve never understood why the gay community wants to pick a fight on this issue.”
“Separate But Equal”, at least in the US, is never really equal. Somehow, someway, there will always be legal benefits that accrue to the “married” that don’t seem to make it to the “civilly partnered”.
Separating the legal concept of marriage from the religious concept is one of the issues the fundies are upset about.
But they’ll learn to deal with it. Or go crazy trying.
If somebody’s church doesn’t want to perform a religious marriage ceremony, so be it. But the government has no business getting involved with the concept of marriage at any more than the most minimal contractual level…
See, over here ‘marriage’ has the legal status and associated rights. “Civil unions” , “Domestic Partnerships” or whatever else you want to call them have no standardized legal standing and are not interchangeable with “marriage”, either civil or religious.That’s what the California decision was all about. It was about striking down “civil unions” et. al. as separate and unequal in the eyes of the law. More than that, it conferred suspect class on homosexuals so that if the state wants to deny them rights normally conferred on heterosexuals, the burden of proof is on the state.
No one is trying to force a particular church to sanctify a homosexual union. No one cares if any particular creed continues to say homosexuals are sinful, damned to hell, and forbidden to marry.
Many homosexual people have had church ceremonies where they marry each other, but *legally* that marriage is meaningless. It’s not the church that confers the status, but the legal definition of marriage.
We just care that those hateful religious beliefs are not forced on people who don’t belong to that faith. Any adult, gay or straight, should be able to go to a justice of the peace and be married. It shouldn’t matter if someone believes God hates fags and doesn’t want them to marry. Phelps & co. have a 1st Amendment right to believe that. What LGBT are fighting for is under the same 1st Amendment right–the freedom from having religion forced on you by the government. A civil marriage shouldn’t be beholden to any particular religious creed.
Yet another gay agenda? Damn, you people sure are busy!
This is yet another sign of homosexual dysfunction.
Any group that puts out that many agendas is in deep trouble. What ever happen to performance metrics, people?
For a lot of people the wedding ceremony is very important because ceremonies are a form of communication. The wedding is a way for the two individuals to tell society (and themselves as the case may be) that this means a lot to them and they want to commit to each other, and their community answers back in the affirmative. There are people who don’t need to go through the wedding song and dance, and they don’t but get along just fine.
I mean, isn’t this actually true? The difference is that normal rational people see this as a good thing
He says “problems we face today,” and as I read the list a applauded just about everything on there. Ha.
I agree, this is definitely a problem we face today.
Something tells me Heath and I disagree on the reason why.
The gay rights movement, contrary to common belief, is not a new phenomenon. The first gay rights movement of which we have a record was the social upheaval in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Bible scholars have pointed out that the events in Sodom and Gomorrah have many parallels in modern times, and these include the tumultuous gatherings of vocal advocates of homosexuality and an insistence on imposing one’s views on others. Recent demonstrations in major American cities, with Christians barricaded behind doors, while crowds of unruly “gay” activists protested in the streets, are very reminiscent of the Biblical account of the events in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Someone is quite simply too stupid to be allowed in polite society and needs to be put away for the good of everyone.
This is some serious delusional thinking.
Given that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was mostly about (significant) power imbalance in relationships, I’d say that the real Sodomites are almost exclusively in the Republican party these days.
“…the entire Maine political establishment is in “love” with “gay” special interests.”
Why do I get the impression that it is only with GREAT effort he doesn’t bust out with “If you love gay interests so much why don’t you marry them?!” ??
and an insistence on imposing one’s views on others
f#cking unbelievable.
Think about dandelions. Mow the lawn trying to get rid of them, and they just grow closer to the ground, down among the grass blades. Try to pull them out, and their roots are so tangled with the grass that it is impossible. Spray them with plant-killer, and you destroy the beauty of your lawn with large, ugly brown spots. Leave them alone, and you end up with lovely yellow accents and a lawn that’s far more interesting than just grass.
Heath’s weed comparison is perhaps more apt than he knows, but I doubt he’d ever understand why.
My husband gets very cranky about the whole business of states licensing marriage. He thinks the state should only be licensing civil unions, which would have all the legal rights currently accorded marriage. The state should be in the business of licensing contracts, not endorsing any religious concept of marriage. You’d go to the state, sign your civil union contract, have it witnessed, pay your fee, and you’d be legal.
If you wanted a wedding, you’d have a wedding. If your religious beliefs require you to be “married”, whatever that would mean in the context of your religion, you’d sort that out with your religious community. None of the state’s business.
I agree in principle, but I say take whatever steps we can toward equal rights, and argue the terminology later.
Does Mickey wear chaps on gay day at Disneyland?
Yeah, his chaps are Goofy and Donald.
Mike Ess said what I thought.
Sexual wrong-doing my fat Uncle George’s ass! (No, I don’t actually have an Uncle George, it’s just that poor Aunt Susie and Sally get picked on so much.)
Mainers do seem to be a wild mix of liberal and conservative in weird pockets, reminding me much more of the western US than anywhere else in the northeaster US.
I agree completely. Too many people get confused between legal marriage, which is a “civil union” and the religious version of marriage. Do these people really think that god approves of and sanctions the union of two atheists in a ceremony performed by a justice of the peace?
Sarcastro wins the thread.
Too many people get confused between legal marriage, which is a “civil union”
it’s a civil marriage.
“it’s a civil marriage.”
…thank you! Such a nice, simple, easy to understand concept.
And the sooner people accept, use, and understand the phrase, the sooner we can get on with tearing down yet another of the stupid social barriers put in place to ensure one group is kept second class…
or most groups…
i will admit, i have NEVER understood the fear of homosexuality. i mean, why? when i read the bibblee for the first time, and i got to Sodam and Gomorrah, what *I* got out of it was Lot was rewarded for throwing his two virgin daughters to a bunch of rapists.
so, where is the fear of gay men in that?
then again, i was raised pagan…
Re: Sodom: Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
Clearly the gay agenda.
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
Clearly the gay agenda.
Sounds almost, well, Republican.
Re: civil unions vs. marriages:
If the two are going to be truly equal, then you’re either going to need a paragraph in the legal definition of a civil union that says “PS: This is legally exactly the same as marriage”, or you’re going to need to amend thousands of federal and state laws to make sure that they apply to both marriage and civil unions. Somehow, I don’t think that the fundies are going to be particularly pleased with either option.
And besides, who is going to go around to the millions of people previously married in a civil ceremony, and tell them that they can’t refer to themselves as “husband” and “wife” any more, but only as “civil partners”, because “marriage” can only be performed by a man in a funny hat. But at least it stops those icky gays from getting married. Unless they go to a Unitarian church, or a liberal Episcopalian church, or that new First Church of Jesus Christ the Interior Decorator that just opened up across the street.
Hrm. How about we limit “marriage” to just those ceremonies performed by the Evangelical Southern Baptist Congregation churches? We can get broad cross-denominational support for that, right?
My husband is so stupid he thought that the Homosexual Agenda is where gay people write down their appointments. I had to explain that the Homosexual Agenda is actually The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, only with gay people. Since my former therapist is gay and Jewish, I guess he gets a copy of the Homosexual Agenda and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while I just get the latter. As for my hubby, he’s half-Jewish on his dad’s side and he’s pretty close to zero on the Kinsey scale, so I think he’ll have to start his own conspiracy. Then again, he’s had several gay rumours and he giggles like a girl and talks with his hands, plus he’s a librarian, so maybe he can still be part of the Homosexual Agenda, plus the Reconstructionist Jews might accept him as a full Jew, so maybe he can still join the International Jewish Conspiracy which I’ve been trying to join, but I can’t find their contact info. Damn!
Maybe Mike Heath can help me with all this.
Now let me get this straight… Same-sex marriage will destroy heterosexual marriage. Okay, got it.
So here’s where I’m confused. My former therapist is in a same-sex marriage. I saw him for a year. My marriage is better now.
Is it possible that my therapist wasn’t following the Homosexual Agenda? Or is he just acting straight?
Maybe Mike Heath can help me out with this. I’m sure he’ll have the answers.
Mike Heath also pointed out “Christians barricaded behind doors” while gays take over the streets. Every year, bunches of Christians (we’re talking straight folks) march in the Pride Parade in Ottawa where I live. Then again, I think they’re mostly Quakers and Anglicans, so I’m not sure they would count as “Christian”. There are also lots of Christians hanging out on the street to watch the parade. Which usually happens on a Sunday, right after church.
I’m Jewish (kinda like the folks from Sodom & Gomorrah), so I never barricade myself in the house. Besides, we don’t have air-conditioning. Some of the gay folks have super-squirters which is almost as good as air-conditioning.
Oh, now I know why those gay-fearing Christians barricade themselves. They don’t want to get their hair and clothes wet.
Get raincoats & umbrellas, duh!
Forget about getting answers from Mike Heath, he’s not so smart after all.