Coalition for Marriage

Policy on use of information on League website

Newspaper column for the Portland Press Herald March 1, 2004 by Michael S. Heath, Executive Director of the Christian Civic League of Maine.

Some politicians, and the leadership of the Catholic Church here in Maine, are saying that we must wait to fight the homosexual marriage battle. They argue that we must wait so that the battle can be waged more professionally -- allowing more time for lobbying, fund raising etc. I understand and respect this perspective. It is however small thinking, in a war that requires big thinking.

The war transcends politics. It is spilling out all over the place. And the result of this conflict will affect basic freedoms and it is certainly threatening our national identity -- our very civilization.

Some will view this as overheated rhetoric. It isn't. What I am saying is as plain as the nose on your face. And if we all would lift our heads above the low hanging mind-numbing moral haze that Satan's smoke machine is pumping out we could take in a breath of fresh air. And when we did, we'd think "Hey, marriage IS between a man and woman." The war would be over, and we wouldn't have to amend our constitution to etch obvious truth in stone.

Even John Kerry is saying that homosexual "marriage" is a bad idea. While he doesn't support the Federal Marriage Amendment, he does say that the states need to take care of this problem. So both the sitting President of the United States, and the man who will likely face him in November, agree that homosexual marriage is a horrible idea. Just the fact that we are having this discussion at that level should horrify us. We are seriously debating the approval of homosexuality. Does that make sense to you? It does not make sense to me.

Alas, we are all liberals when anyone mouths the words of our modern orthodoxy. All a person needs to say these days is "civil" anything and we all raise our hands and shout "Hallelujah." You know what I mean...civil rights, civil unions, civility. These are buzzwords of our ever changing (I should say evolving, sorry), essentially pagan public dogmas. And we respond to them, especially when delivered by a sincere and intelligent lesbian, with thoughtless fawning adoration.

Maine cannot wait to define marriage. And it is probably going to take a constitutional amendment to resolve it. Elite and media culture in Maine is all for homosexual marriage, or some look alike program like domestic partnerships or civil unions. The politicians in Augusta (not all of them, thank God) think this stuff is part of the "evolution of marriage." If we don't act in March we will be entrusting the fate of our families to activist judges who are simply robed lawyers trained in modern temples of secularism (law schools). They have become pretend theologians. It isn't good to appoint pretenders for life and not have the spine to hold them accountable.

The future of our country is in the hands of our pastors and priests. Unfortunately the tendrils of sexual corruption have slithered -- noticed -- into their ranks. The battle for the soul of our civilization is going to be fought by forgiven sinners. That is always the way of it. It isn't the soldier who lays wounded to die who wins the day. The soldier who transforms his wounds into the mettle of leadership (and uses his heel to crush the head of the serpent) causes change.

Are there any soldiers out there willing to stand with me at 9:30 a.m. March 2nd -- tomorrow -- on the third floor of the State House? Now is the time. As my friend Paul Madore reminded me the other day, "You fight where you stand." Now is the time. Join me.