Sunday, September 20, 2009

Bangor Daily News Takes on Stand for Marriage Maine and Catholic Church Lies and Untruths

As was the case in California with Proposition 8, the Roman Catholic Church is taking an active role in seeking to over turn gay marriage in Maine - something I wish the IRS would investigate since 501(c)(3) charities such as churches are NOT supposed to get involved with advocating for specific pieces of legislation. In this effort, the Church is firmly in bed with the Stand for Marriage Maine crowd of homophobes. As is almost always the case with the Catholic Church of late, the Church fathers close their eyes to lies and the dissemination of deliberate falsehoods are part of the Church's efforts to keep gay and lesbian couples second class citizens and to marginalize their families. Meanwhile, of course, the dottering hypocrites within the Church hierarchy ignore the growing rot within their own ranks and do nothing to punish those who enabled or covered up for predator priests. Fortunately, the Bangor Daily News is calling the Stand for Marriage on the dishonest anti-same sex marriage campaign. Here are some highlights on the falsehoods the Stand for Marriage and Catholic Church are pushing in Maine:
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The debate about the Nov. 3 ballot’s Question 1, the effort to repeal Maine’s newly minted same-sex marriage law, will heat up in the coming weeks. Heat is one thing. Falsehoods re another. Opponents of the law are bringing children into the fray, suggesting their innocence would be sullied if the repeal fails. It’s a ploy that has been used effectively before; any candidate for elected office who supports sex education is said to favor handing out condoms to kindergarten children. This time, the claim by repeal proponents is that schools would be forced to teach “gay sex education.” It is baseless and betrays an ignorance about education. The claim was made by the Stand for Marriage Maine group in a recent mass e-mail message soliciting donations.
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The same-sex marriage law does not address anything in state education law. And, further, there are no state mandates to teach sex education, let alone explicit “gay sex education,” as the repeal group’s e-mail stated. Sexuality is discussed in most Maine high schools, and has been for decades, but locally elected school boards oversee those curriculums and parents are able to exempt their children from those discussions.
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So, the question that remains about the repeal proponents is: Are they knowingly misleading people by claiming schools will be forced to teach the details of gay sex, or are they genuinely ignorant that same-sex couples are among us, and that their children are in our schools? Neither speaks well of their argument supporting a yes vote.
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Again, I have to ask why is it apparently just fine for self-proclaimed Christians to lie, cheat and engage in other nasty actions to further their theocratic agenda? In my view, honesty and telling the truth should be among the hallmarks of Christians. Nowadays, lying and dishonesty seem to be the norm.

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