| Last Updated:
Mar 11, 2010 - 9:20:54 PM |
 | | Mike Hein, Administrator |
Central Maine's daily newspapers, the
Kennebec Journal and
Morning Sentinel, weighed in today with their support for L.D. 375, "An Act To Amend the Family Medical Leave Laws." This pending legislation would extend further special rights to homosexuals and unmarried heterosexual couples, and further burden Maine's employers with yet another unfunded mandate.
The League's Administrator, Mike Hein, in a
press release, noticed two glaring omissions regarding the lengthy, stand-alone editorial. "The editorial did not clearly identify the bill as L.D. 375, nor give the bill's title. It rambled on at length about the supposed merits of giving more special rights to homosexuals, but never got around to telling the reader the name of the bill," Hein said.
Hein emphasized, "More importantly, this editorial neglected to mention that the bill's primary support comes from the radical homosexual lobby."
Hein listed the bill's supporters: EqualityMaine, the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), the Maine AIDS Alliance, the Maine Equal Justice Project, the National Organization for Women - Maine Chapter, the National Organization for Women - Portland Chapter, and the Maine Women's Lobby.
"It's unbelievable that the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel newspapers would be so sloppy in their editorials as to unintentionally leave out the names of these groups," Hein said. "Space did not seem to be a problem, considering it was their only editorial of the day, measured at six paragraphs/nineteen sentences."
"The only other possibility is that the papers intentionally censored the bill’s supporters. In doing so, they purposefully misled their readership, and did their readers a tremendous disservice. No wonder they left out the bill’s identification and title," Hein concluded.
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The text of the editiorial is as follows:
Fairness in the Family Leave Act
According to the latest census figures, there are at least 4,000 Maine households comprised of same-sex couples. Almost one third of the female couples have a child under 18; 20 percent of the male same-sex couples have a child under 18. In addition, the state is home to thousands of households comprised of unmarried, but committed, male-and-female couples, many of which have children.
All of these are families, in the modern sense of the word. The family members live in the same home, own property together, pool their resources and legally and emotionally depend on each other.
Yet when trouble strikes, the members of these families do not have the same rights that married people have. When a spouse or the child of a spouse is sick and needs care, under the Maine Family Medical Leave Act, a married person can legally take off from work for up to 10 unpaid or paid weeks in order to provide care for that family member.
But if your domestic partner -- either same-sex or of the opposite sex -- gets sick, you're out of luck. Ditto if your partner's child, whom you've helped raise as your own child, gets sick. Because you don't have the blessing of the state on your domestic arrangements, you don't get access to the benefits of the Maine Family and Medical Leave Act. And you can't care for your loved ones without significant sacrifice. No one wants to make the choice between keeping a job or caring for a family member. It's hard enough to make the choice to care for that person and forego a salary while doing so.
Recognizing the significant hardship this means for many Maine families, Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, has introduced a bill to amend the state's family and medical leave act to allow it to cover domestic partners. The legal definition of domestic partner would be adopted from the state's insurance laws, thus ensuring that every casual roommate doesn't get to take advantage of the benefit.
The bill is supported by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, the Maine Chamber of Commerce and a host of other groups. We support it as well, because it supports Maine families. And in the end, families are about commitment, love and responsibility. Anything we can do to promote those values strikes us as a move in the right direction.
From the April 17, 2007 edition of the Kennebec Journal.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is reproduced for non-profit educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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