The Marriage Fight in Maine is Heating Up

From the Wikipedia entry, here's the background for the upcoming election fight over the fate of same-sex marriage in Maine.

A bill to allow same-sex marriage in Maine was signed into law on May 6, 2009. Maine is the fifth U.S. state to recognize same-sex marriages, and the second to do so through a legislative process rather than through a judicial ruling. The law would have taken effect on September 11, 2009, but will now be subject to a people's veto in Maine's November 3 elections.

The latest item of controversy is this TV ad just released by StandForMarriageMaine.com.

The fallout for the law professor featured in the ad is detailed in "Wrong Lessons Learned," a post at The Catholic Thing. The post rejects the claim of same-sex marriage advocates to be the moral heirs of the civil rights fight of the sixties, and also details the strategy of same-sex marriage advocates to shame those who speak out in favor of the traditional legal definition of marriage into silence — in particular to punish any speaker who publicly voices arguments defending the traditional legal definition of marriage.

The good news is that the LDS Church has not issued a public appeal to Mormons in Maine to work in support of the upcoming referendum. If the referendum passes, it will be due to the wishes of the citizens of Maine. [Note: Even if the LDS Church does publicly urge its membership to support the referendum, the resulting vote would still be an expression of the citizens of Maine.] I expect that many individual Mormons in Maine (and there aren't that many) will vote in favor of the referendum, and some will even donate time and money in support of the referendum. As citizens, they do have that right.

Comments

[Ian Cook]

I suspect that one of the reasons that such a big push was made in California is because of the fairly large number of members there. Also, it has been a trend in the past that, with many laws, California is often the front runner. Maybe leadership was hoping that the California ban would rub off on the rest of the country. Who knows.

There is always the theory that they don't want the same kind of press that they got with California.