This column was published in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Sentinel on Wednesday, April 30, 2008.

After a particularly hard winter, Mainers, along with the rest of Creation, are rejoicing at the long-awaited return of the sun. Spring gives us an opportunity to ponder why the sun, blazing out with its life-giving power, is an emblem of God, and why the story of man begins in a garden. The gardener digging in the cool, dark earth can see that each green, tender shoot springs up in pursuit of warmth and light. The warmth and light they seek comes from another world, a world that is high above them.  What warmth and light are to a young plant, human reason is to the life of man. It too comes from high above us, as does the gift of divine revelation.  Just as the plant grows according to inborn laws, man’s life is governed by laws which are discovered by human reason.  This is called natural law. When a gardener raises a young plant according to the laws pertaining to its growth, he can expect a fine result, whether it is a field of golden grain ripening under a Midwestern sun, or a solitary rose growing quietly by a cottage in Maine.  In the same way, those who govern us -- if they govern rightly -- produce a well-ordered society.

Failure to obey the correct laws results in waste and desolation, the kind of waste and desolation suggested in Thomas Moore’s famous question about relaxing the laws pertaining to marriage. In the play, "A Man for All Seasons"  Moore asks, "When the last law is down.... where will you hide... do you really think you can stand upright in the winds that would blow then? "  Moore meant to draw a picture of the disaster that would result if Henry VIII were to obtain a divorce and remarry.

The king’s desire for more sexual freedom was, of course, a pretext for his own personal and political ambition.  Moore understood that to violate a fundamental principle of sexual morality would let loose a storm which would rage long and hard enough to topple many other laws and many other standards of morality. As wise and as learned as Moore was, he could not have foreseen the type of storm raging across America today. He could not have foreseen, for example, the annual Portland Gay Pride parade, in which marchers carry a black and blue striped flag to celebrate sadomasochism.

This of course, is the pattern behind liberalism. Any ‘freedom’ based on a repudiation of natural law and human reason leads inevitably to license and licentiousness, and a gradual disintegration of society.

The gay rights movement is the bell-weather which tells us our society is unraveling.  This gradual unraveling may take the form of a call for same sex marriage, normalizing homosexuality in the eyes of kindergarteners, or invading St. Patrick’s cathedral during a gay pride march.

We cannot judge the morality of a society by the words and slogans it uses. Instead, we must judge by results. We must ask how successful our leaders have been in cultivating a safe and wholesome society. What are we to think about the practice of giving birth control to middle school students? What are we to conclude when it is alleged that a prosecutor in the Attorney General’s office has child pornography on his computer? What are we to say about the 45 million abortions performed since Roe v. Wade? Perhaps the time has come to set aside our self-serving professions of tolerance and compassion.  Perhaps the time has come to judge society by the method Jesus recommended – that is, we should judge any idea by the fruit it produces. A good tree, Jesus said, yields good fruit, and a bad tree yields rotten fruit. Only then will we understand how the sexual revolution, and its radical wing, the gay rights movement, have reaped for Maine and the nation a harvest of barrenness, sterility, and shame.

Michael S. Heath is Executive Director of the Christian Civic League of Maine.  He is collecting signatures for the "Yes for Marriage and Equality" campaign.  Go to www.leaguerecord.com for more information.