Scripture entrusts the raising of children to parents, not the state. "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4, ESV). Children are "a heritage from the Lord" (Psalm 127:3, ESV), given first to a family, not a bureaucracy.

The U.S. Constitution has long recognized this same truth. In Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Supreme Court held that the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment includes the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. In Troxel v. Granville (2000), the Court called this "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests" it protects. And in Parham v. J.R. (1979), the Court held that parents are presumed to act in their child's best interest in medical decisions, and the state may not override that presumption absent proof of neglect or abuse.

We support requiring parental consent, notification, and access to medical records whenever a minor receives medical care. Scripture establishes this responsibility; our Constitution and courts have simply recognized what God ordained first.

When a school helps a child socially transition without telling their parents, it steps into a role God gave to mothers and fathers, not educators. "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6, ESV) — a charge Scripture gives to parents, reinforced by God's command: "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deuteronomy 6:7, ESV).

This is the same principle the Constitution protects. The Supreme Court has long held that the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty guarantee includes the right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control (Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925), later calling it "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests" it recognizes (Troxel v. Granville, 2000). Lower courts remain divided on how far that right extends inside a public school building, but the constitutional principle points the same direction Scripture does: parents, not the school, hold primary authority over a child's upbringing.

We support requiring schools to notify parents in every case. Concealing this from a parent doesn't protect a child; it treats a parent as an obstacle rather than the authority God — and, in principle, our Constitution — calls them to be.

Scripture teaches that our bodies are not ours to remake as we see fit. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27, ESV). "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:13–14, ESV). A child's sex is not an assignment to be corrected but a fact of God's design to be honored — and a child is not equipped to consent to permanently altering it.

The Supreme Court agrees this is a decision states may make. In United States v. Skrmetti (2025), the Court upheld Tennessee's law prohibiting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors seeking gender transition, holding that such a law does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. The ruling doesn't require every state to act — but it confirms that Maine is free to protect children this way without running afoul of the Constitution.

We support prohibiting these procedures for minors in Maine.

In the beginning, God made two distinct sexes, not a spectrum to be self-defined. "The Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him'... So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs... And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man" (Genesis 2:18, 21–22, ESV). Adam recognized her as distinctly, wonderfully his counterpart — "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Genesis 2:23, ESV) — the two becoming "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24, ESV). From the very order of creation, God made womanhood distinct, not incidental.

That distinctiveness is worth protecting, not erasing — and Scripture shows us how highly Christ himself valued women. In a culture that often disregarded a woman's voice, Jesus welcomed women who "provided for them out of their means" as followers and supporters of his ministry (Luke 8:1–3, ESV), spoke openly and personally with a woman at the well even as "his disciples... marveled that he was talking with a woman" (John 4:27, ESV), and entrusted women — not men — to be the first witnesses of his resurrection, the central claim of the Christian faith (Luke 24:1–10, ESV). Honoring women means protecting the opportunities and spaces they are worthy of.

Title IX exists for exactly this reason. Congress passed it in 1972 to guarantee that "no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in... any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance" — language written to open doors for women and girls in school athletics after decades of being shut out. That promise is hollowed out if the same opportunities can simply be given away again, this time to biological males competing in girls' categories. The Supreme Court affirmed as much this year: in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox (2026), the Court held that reserving girls' sports for biological females violates neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause — Title IX's promise of equal opportunity for women supports these laws, not the other way around.

We support restricting participation in girls' sports, and access to girls' spaces, to biological females.

The Christian Civic League affirms that human life begins at conception and is worthy of legal protection at every stage that follows. This conviction is grounded in Scripture, not granted by the Constitution — and it would hold true regardless of what any court or government recognizes.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you" (Jeremiah 1:5, ESV). The psalmist praises God for the same reality in his own life: "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb... I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:13–14, ESV). A child's life and identity, in Scripture, begin before birth — not at some later point the law is free to redefine.

Before 2023, Maine permitted abortion after viability only when the pregnant woman's life or health was at risk. The law Governor Mills signed that year removed that standard entirely. Under current law, an abortion may be performed at any point in pregnancy — including the third trimester, up to birth — whenever a licensed physician judges it necessary in their own professional judgment. The statute names no qualifying condition, no diagnosis, and no gestational limit; the physician's own judgment is the only requirement.

Our objection to this law doesn't depend on the Constitution, but the Constitution no longer stands in its way, either. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, holding that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and returning "the authority to regulate abortion... to the people and their elected representatives." That authority now rests with the Maine Legislature — the same body that passed this expansion.

We support repealing the 2023 expansion and, at a minimum, restoring the standard that existed before its passage.

Our position starts from the same conviction: life begins at conception and deserves protection from that moment on, regardless of what the law does or doesn't require. Being compelled, through taxation, to help pay for a practice that ends a life in the womb is not neutrality — it is participation in something we believe is gravely wrong on its own terms, independent of any court ruling.

Scripture calls God's people to act, not look away, when a life is at stake: "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, 'Behold, we did not know this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?" (Proverbs 24:11–12, ESV).

The Constitution doesn't require otherwise, either. In Harris v. McRae (1980), the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment, holding that the government is not constitutionally obligated to fund abortion simply because it funds other medical care — a state may choose not to pay for it.

We support ending the use of public funds to pay for elective abortions in Maine.

Life and death are not ours to dispose of; they belong to God. "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand" (Deuteronomy 32:39, ESV). Job, having lost everything, still confessed: "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21, ESV) — worship, not despair, even at the boundary of life and death. A law that helps end a life early treats that boundary as ours to move.

The Constitution places no obstacle to reversing this. In Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Due Process Clause does not protect a right to assistance in committing suicide, and upheld a state's ban on the practice. States remain free to prohibit it — Maine is equally free to reverse its choice to allow it.

We support repealing Maine's physician-assisted suicide law.

Children are entrusted first to their parents, not to the state: "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward" (Psalm 127:3, ESV). And when a government mandate conflicts with a sincerely held religious conviction, Scripture is clear about which one governs: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29, ESV). A family's religious objection to a medical procedure for their child does not disappear because a school district or state health office disagrees with it.

The Fourteenth Amendment protects the same principle. In Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Supreme Court held that the liberty the Fourteenth Amendment protects includes the right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children — a right the Court later called "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests" it recognizes (Troxel v. Granville, 2000). And in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Court ruled directly on this kind of conflict, holding that a state's compulsory schooling mandate had to give way to Amish parents' religious objections. Conditioning a child's access to public or private school on a vaccine their family objects to on religious grounds burdens that same constitutional right.

We support requiring that a religious exemption be available to families who object, on sincerely held religious grounds, to vaccine mandates as a condition of enrolling their children in public or private school.

Scripture warns what happens when government takes too much from the people it governs. When Israel demanded a king, Samuel warned them plainly: "He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants... He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king... but the Lord will not answer you in that day" (1 Samuel 8:15, 17–18, ESV). Heavy taxation and mounting regulatory cost are not a neutral inconvenience; Scripture treats them as a burden government should be slow to impose on families trying to provide for their own.

This is a matter of policy judgment the Constitution leaves to Maine's own legislature, not a specific right it commands — but that same restraint is worth exercising. A lighter tax and regulatory burden means families keep more of what they earn to raise their own children, which is exactly the responsibility Scripture gives to parents in the first place.

We support reducing state taxes and regulatory costs that make it more expensive for working families to live and raise children in Maine.

Scripture ties provision to work as a matter of both dignity and responsibility. "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10, ESV). Paul instructs that even someone with a history of taking from others should instead "labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need" (Ephesians 4:28, ESV) — work is not only how we provide for ourselves, but how we become able to help others.

States have wide latitude to structure these programs this way. In Dandridge v. Williams (1970), the Supreme Court held that a state's welfare regulations are judged under rational-basis review, giving states — including Maine — broad discretion to condition benefits on reasonable requirements like work or volunteering for those able to meet them.

We support basic work or volunteer requirements for able-bodied adults receiving public benefits, including Medicaid.

Scripture calls believers to treat their bodies as something other than their own to do with as they please: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19–20, ESV). A loosely regulated marijuana industry — including the illegal grow operations that have exploited Maine's medical marijuana program — profits from undermining that stewardship.

Regulating marijuana operations for public health and safety falls squarely within the state's traditional police power, an area the Constitution leaves to Maine's own judgment rather than a specific federal right.

We support significantly increasing regulation and enforcement oversight of marijuana operations in Maine.

Scripture warns against the love of money and the false promise of quick riches: "Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it" (Proverbs 13:11, ESV). Paul is more direct still: "Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils" (1 Timothy 6:9–10, ESV). Casino-style gambling on a smartphone, available anywhere in the state at any hour, is built to exploit exactly this temptation.

Regulating gambling, like marijuana, is a matter of the state's traditional police power over public welfare — the Constitution leaves this choice to Maine, not to it.

We support rolling back iGaming and limiting further expansion of gambling in Maine.