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Oct 22, 2009 - 3:04:39 PM |
For over a century, the Christian Civic League of Maine has been on the front line of battle when law and public policy threatened to interfere with God’s design for family life. Though its name is different now, the purpose remains the same. “We were formed to elect honest public officials, to encourage all the people of Maine in good citizenship, to enact good laws and provide for their impartial enforcement,” says Executive Director, Mike Heath, “and we will continue doing those things. We will do them with a slightly more public emphasis on the issues from a pro-family perspective with a concern for family formation, marriage and human sexuality. Those are the issues that evangelical Christians and an increasing number of people are concerned about.”
Last September, the League changed its name to the Maine Family Policy Council, in order to reflect more accurately its 18-year association with Focus on the Family. Maine, along with 37 other states that have Focus-affiliated family policy councils, is taking a leadership role in addressing, from a Biblical perspective, important matters affecting families.
The Council has lost some of its support base in recent years after a succession of very public controversies - with its director at the center. Two Board members disgruntled with management of Council finances sued the Board but were subsequently fined by the court. The Council also endured a great deal of heat during three referendums to keep sexual orientation out of Maine’s Human Right Act, but that was just a cool breeze compared to the inferno Mike ignited five years ago. Writing in an email, he declared the intent to uncover and publish the sexual orientation of political leaders, “especially those ‘who want to overturn marriage…’”
“You don’t speak out on an issue that’s controversial without it being controversial,” Mike admits. “I’ve been very controversial in the last few years. Have I made mistakes? Sure.” The “outing” incident, as Mike calls it, left Mike’s colleagues disillusioned and generated pure outrage from the State House and gay rights proponents. Some churches and longtime supporters abandoned the Council out of distaste for Mike’s action. Mike made a public apology and was suspended from his duties for a month by the Council’s Board.
The storm eventually subsided, and for some time, Mike was fairly silent. He has said little about it until now. “The mistake I made was apologizing,” he explains, “because when I apologized, it immediately gave consent to the wrong, and my motive was not wrong.” He said, "Everything happened so fast." He apologized because he “was scared to death” when called by a reporter. “I realized how it was going to spin, panicked, became afraid, and I apologized. I should have clarified what was in my mind at the time I wrote [what was in the email].”
He wishes now he’d taken more time before answering the reporter to provide a better response. The apology was for “the part where I was going to gather tips and rumors and publish them, but I didn’t apologize for my concern. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I wasn’t interested in exposing everybody in the State House. I was interested in making a point about how marriage is being pushed to the side, while sexual orientation is being made the be-all and end-all of our relationships.”
Mike was seeing a complete disconnect between sexuality and marriage and the elimination of marriage by redefining it. Mike believes most people understand that sexuality is an essential part of marriage.
Mike states. “Who’s forcing this change? The elites, the politicians, lawyers, and the media – that’s how they think.” It was that mindset that prompted him to write what he did.
He recognizes he probably should have lost his job over the episode, and it probably should have ended his career. He regrets that it caused some residual damage to the Council. “It hurt us,” he ruefully admits. “No doubt it hurt us. People still bring it up occasionally, but because we have such a resilient organization and such a good strong Board, we were able to ride it out. I’m still here. The Council is strong, and I’m excited about the future for the ministry.”
Senator Dennis Damon's (D-Hancock) bill, “An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom,” as well as Rep. Les Fossel's (R-Alna) bill to extend marital protections and privileges to domestic partnerships have propelled the Council to the front lines once again. Twice, the Council has led a successful effort to subdue growing support for recognition of sexual orientation as part of the Human Rights Act. When it came up in a referendum again in 2005, a “respectable” 45% of voters opposed the bill, but it wasn’t enough, and the measure was passed.
“We continue to object to that,” Mike declares. “We think the effects of it on society are very, very troubling and, in some cases, absolutely devastating to individuals.” Laws today now prevent adults in certain public school positions from honestly confronting the question of whether or not a pubescent young boy is gay or not. “We’re now starting to introduce the idea of homosexuality when kids are very young and impressionable. Real adults with common sense are going to help steer that boy away from that. We used to call it innocence. We used to think it was important to protect the innocence of children. We don’t even talk about it anymore. Because these laws exist, adults are silenced.”
Mike expresses concern over an obscure but growing movement among evangelicals known as the “Emerging Church.” Its belief system seeks to lessen what it views as harsh pro-life and pro-family activism by conservatives almost by apologizing for it. Followers are pushing for a theology and a practice that accepts living life outside the covenant relationship of marriage in a sexually active way. They want to get closer to “people who feel they’re homosexual and offer to become part of protecting their rights as part of affirming their sense of who they are.” Mike wonders how proponents of such a doctrine can get around the truth of Romans Chapter one and other Scripture passages on sexuality, but “they’re doing so. They’re giving consent to the idea that sex outside of marriage, which Jesus clearly condemns, is something we have to treat delicately.”
It’s that same sense of lax moral standards that Mike believes is contributing to society’s increasing decay. “The law, in an important way, is a teacher. When we lower the expectations that we include in public policy or in law, then people live up to the lowest possible thing they can get away with. We’ve seen this relaxation of laws over the last century in the direction of being permissive, when it comes to family formation in general. Laws have relaxed in making it easy to get divorced. They’ve relaxed in making it easy to produce pornography and distribute it. They’ve relaxed in providing sort of extreme protections for what, just a few short years ago, everyone would have referred to as sexual perversion or as an abomination or as sodomy. We would argue there is a direct correlation between what everyone is dealing with in their own families and in their own thinking when it comes to morals, particularly sexual morals and lifestyles.”
Mike finds that the title of Senator Damon’s bill – to end discrimination in civil marriage and affirm religious freedom - is an oxymoron. “It’s the opposite of what they’re suggesting,” he says. “It’s religiously intolerant to eliminate marriage in a country like ours, which derives its morals, its culture, its unity from centuries of tradition built up by Christianity and Judaism. It’s the height of religious intolerance to eliminate the institution of marriage, and it demonstrates a willful ignorance of the role religion plays in a nation’s identity. It gives that such short shrift, it’s an insult to any Americans who take their religion seriously.”
The Council is encouraging believers to lock arms with one another and stand their moral ground on this issue. Though Mike favors amending the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman, he feels there needs to be a major culture change first in order for that to happen. Defeating Damon’s and Fossel’s bills would certainly be a great start. Down the road, he envisions the Council becoming a hub for distributing pro-family materials. The Council is passionate about The Truth Project and committed to the resources produced by Focus on the Family.
Past and present supporters of the Maine Family Policy Council can rest assured it remains sound in its purpose and practice. Though, much like the rest of the country, it is tightening its belt, it is nonetheless in fair health financially and plans to stick around a long time to promote the health and welfare of God-ordained marriage and family.
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