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AUGUSTA, Maine — This November, Maine voters will decide if the state should allow marriage licenses to be issued to same-sex couples. The measure marks the first time supporters of same-sex “marriage” have proposed the question of legalization on a state ballot.
The proposal goes before voters of the Pine Tree State three years after residents passed a “people’s veto,” effectively negating an effort by the Maine Legislature to legalize same-sex “marriage” earlier in 2009.
The campaigns both for and against the initiative play out in a national context this year: President Obama’s position against same-sex “marriage” has “evolved” into support for it, and his Democratic Party has adopted a plank in its national platform supporting legalization. Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy’s support of traditional marriage drew criticism from the Democratic mayors of several large cities, spurring grassroots support for the fast-food chain.
The Maine initiative, titled “An Act to Allow Marriage Licenses for Same-sex Couples and Protect Religious Freedom,” seeks to make terms related to marriage gender neutral in civil law.
The proposed act includes distinct language to offer religious-conscience protection.
“This chapter does not require any member of the clergy to perform or any church, religious denomination or other religious institution to host any marriage in violation of the religious beliefs of that member of the clergy, church, religious denomination or other religious institution,” states the proposal.
It goes on to state that a refusal of a religious institution to perform a marriage under the new marriage classification cannot be the source of a lawsuit or threaten its tax-exempt status.
However, if the measure does pass, a host of wedding-related businesses — cake makers, photographers, banquet-hall owners — could encounter a stream of same-sex couples. If a business were to refuse to serve such customers, it might be in violation of a 2005 Maine law that added sexual orientation to civil-rights protection.
According to Amy Sneirson of the Maine Human Rights Commission, these types of businesses could be considered a service industry in the broader category of public accommodation listed under the law.
In can be complicated to determine, in each case, “whether something truly is a public accommodation,” said Sneirson, whose organization, a partial independent agency of the state, reviews cases.
Theoretically then, a small business owner or sole proprietor who doesn’t want to provide services for a same-sex “wedding” on moral grounds could be in a challenging legal situation. But this year’s proposed act to extend marriage licenses does not change the 2005 law already in effect.
A Catholic Proponent
Matt McTighe is the campaign manager of Mainers United for Marriage, the central organization supporting the effort to expand the issuing of marriage certificates. He said that his group has had 130,000 conversations with people in Maine since 2009 and that attitudes have shifted.
“It’s not always as cut and dried? as ‘I was 100% against you, and now I am 100% for you,’ but people are moving closer and closer to being more supportive every day,” said McTighe in an interview.
He said he fully supports and protects people’s ability to express religious beliefs in the public square as long as they are in compliance with the law.
McTighe, a Catholic, said that making a lifelong commitment to be with another person is a “stabilizing force that actually makes my family stronger; it makes all families stronger.
“It reaffirms that marriage really is, at its core, about committing to one person for the rest of your life — to love and honor and commit to somebody,” he said. “To me, that’s not a redefinition — that’s us trying to honor and join this institution, not change it.”
He says Catholics have changed their mind about the issue.
“It’s not something that they think is incompatible with Church teaching; in fact, a lot of them look to their faith to help affirm them: the idea of just, really, like, you know, the Golden Rule.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that homosexuals “do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them, it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (2358). “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (2359).
Portland Diocese’s Response
In 2009, the Diocese of Portland’s public-policy director took a leave of absence to lead a political action committee (PAC) called Stand for Marriage Maine, which had the help of evangelical Christians, Mormons and others in fighting against a measure passed by the Maine Legislature to legalize same-sex “marriage.”
A provision that allows citizens to gather signatures against a state law, called a “People’s Veto,” ended up winning with 53% of the vote, shutting down the effort.
Then the Diocese of Portland, which incorporates all of Maine, took up second collections at Masses to support the effort, and Bishop Richard Malone appealed to other bishops for financial assistance.
This year, Bishop Malone and the diocese have opted to not take part in the central PAC called Protect Marriage Maine. Instead, the diocese is focused on an education campaign centered around a pastoral letter called “Marriage: Yesterday, Today, Always.” The letter and other information can be found on a site called The Beauty of Marriage.
Earlier this month, Bishop Malone was installed as the bishop of Buffalo, N.Y., but he is also the apostolic administrator for the Portland Diocese.
Though the pastoral letter coincides with the effort to change the marriage classification, it had been in the works since 2011, according to Brian Souchet, director of the diocese’s Office for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage.
In a March 2 videotaped press conference, Bishop Malone gave statements and answered questions about the letter, along with his team in the marriage office.
“I am also inspired to write this letter because so many people, in my opinion, have forgotten the unique and particular qualities that must be present to constitute a marriage,” he said.
Bishop Malone said his hope is that more people will understand the “unique gift” of marriage and that “they will embrace it for their lives and allow it to form their consciences as they prepare to vote this November.”
He pointed to the situation in 2009 and how many Catholics “needed a deeper understanding of the nature of marriage.”
“For 30 or 40 years, and I hate to admit it, in the Catholic Church in this country, we haven’t done as good a job educating our people about some very important things,” said Bishop Malone.
Souchet told the Register that the educational effort will continue beyond the November election.
“We plan on being very vocal, not just because there’s a campaign, but because this issue is so important.”
Bishop Malone’s pastoral letter draws on the Vatican II document Gaudium Et Spes: “Children are meant to be the gift of the permanent and exclusive union of a husband and wife and are seen as the crown of marriage.”
“A child is meant to have a mother and father,” Bishop Malone wrote. He also calls to mind the scriptural imagery of God as a potter and that “the different elements of clay and water represent the distinct ‘elements’ of every marriage, one man and one woman, who always stand in need of the Lord’s care and assistance.”
“Just as the finished piece of pottery symbolizes the unique and exclusive bond that arises from the exchange of marriage vows, so it also signifies the new reality that comes about from different and complementary elements.”
The letter also includes a section that presents the institution of marriage within a natural law framework. Pope Benedict XVI is quoted in his address to the Roman Rota in January of this year: “Thus, there is no such thing as one (kind of) marriage according to life and another according to law: Marriage is one thing alone; it constitutes a real legal bond between the man and the woman, a bond which sustains the authentic conjugal dynamic of life and love.”
Register correspondent Justin Bell writes from Boston.
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Unfortunately most people in Maine will vote to allow homosexual marriage because Homosexuals have successfully indoctrinated their agenda into the mainstream. It is pathetic. Maine used to be a wonderful place to live but not anymore.
This sounds like a good compromise. Let the state legislate civil commitments and the church administer religious ceremonies. Hopefully, marriages and families will become stronger through the loving commitment of all, that’s The Beauty of Marriage.
Re: Drew
There can be no compromise. This is how Satan works. He wants people to compromise on the Catholic beliefs and teachings because, in essence, the compromise is the turning away from church teachings. Even if churches are protected, the lay people are not. Private business owners will not be protected from practicing their beliefs. Satan tries to wrap up evil in a pretty package and that’s what is going on here.
I note that this article failed to quote anything from paragraphs 1601 to 1666 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, i. e., those parts of the Catechism actually having to do with marriage.
Thanks for the well balanced article. It gave talking points from both sides.
I don’t know if Same Sex Marriage will pass this time, or next time but sometime, it will.
Civil rights will seldom pass a vote of the non supressed until the discrimination is too obvious. That tipping point is being hit north of the Mason/Dixon line. Down south is another story.
I hope Maine will reject this attempt by the homsexual proponents. Our culture continues to deteriorate. A homosexual union can never be called a marriage. Please. Call it a civil union if you want but don’t push this garbage on the rest of us. The water gets hotter and hotter and the frog is more and more relaxed. Come on Maine.
When you see a committed couple; loving, caring, dedicated to raising their children together, it matters not their genders or others political correctness. Labels do not help here. Loving does. We all must be open and broad and courageous enough to accept and receive LOVE (Jesus, the Holy Spirit) wherever we see and experience it. That is what the Gospel, the good news, directs us towards
Mr. McTighe claims that marriage is just a commitment between two people, and that two people of the same sex can make that commitment just as well as a man and a woman. There are two fundamental problems with this position.
First, the commitment possible between two people of the same sex cannot possibly approach the type and degree of commitment between, for instance, my wife and myself, since we are not only committed to raising any children we might conceive, we’ve essentially committed ourselves to the unknown, as we were unable to predict when, whether or how many such conceptions might occur in the course of our lives. No same-sex couple could ever claim to make a commensurate commitment. Even a couple who uses contraception (and who accept the limits thereof) makes a greater commitment than any same-sex couple does.
The second problem is that while there are very good reasons to expect a man and a woman to make a public commitment to each other before beginning an intimate relationship, there are no such reasons to expect a same-sex couple to wed. Combined with the absence of any expectation that their union could make some contribution to society beyond themselves, that reduces “marriage” for same-sex couples to something merely sentimental. While men and women can often be blamed for letting the sentimental aspects of marriage overwhelm the real and practical reasons for it, the fact is that those real and practical reasons are still operative, as much as some like to pretend they’re not or that they don’t matter.
My Parish is St Brendans in Rockland and Camden Maine.
We need help and prayers.
The gay movement is very powerful in Maine. They have the
newspapers and Maine State Education Association.
I have taken heed of Justice Scalias minority opinion several
years ago when he saw the growth of Judicial moves to gain power
in the gay lobby. This win would allow them the legitimacy they
crave…voter.
It seems to me that many of you are confusing the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony with a civil marriage.
The Church should have nothing to say about civil marriage contracts as long as it is able to maintain control over who receives the sacrament.
I disagree with Mr. McTighe’s position. Removing sexual difference from marriage does redefine it. Without sexual difference, marriage is no longer a one-flesh communion open to the gift of new life. It can’t possibly be, since two persons of the same sex are unable to form a one-flesh union - they’re unable to give themselves to each other in a conjugal, marital way. The trend now seems to talk about marriage in terms of love (left undefined) and commitment, but do sex and babies no longer matter? It seems to me that they are central to what marriage is.
Furthermore, redefining marriage is going to redefine parenthood. The right of a child to have a father and a mother (best: his or her *own* father and mother) is going to be eclipsed by the “right” of adults to have their personal relationships recognized by the state. This is serious stuff.
http://www.marriageuniqueforareason.org/faq/
“Love” isn’t some magic word that somehow makes objectively evil acts good. This is the great heresy of our age. Like all heresies, it takes a kernal of truth, but distorts it. In this case, homosexualists take Christian charity (a good thing) and fuse it to moral relativism (a bad thing). But love divorced from truth isn’t love at all—it’s a lie.
Now there are some well-meaning Catholics that want to avoid confrontation by saying something to the effect of, “Well, you guys go have your civil unions over there, and we’ll have our marriages over here.” Sorry, but that position has been explicitly rejected by the Church. See the CDF’s recent “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons”:
11. The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.
For a group that touts its associations based on consent, I’m afraid it has become clear that, to homosexuals, “no” does not mean no.
Leslie Hittner said:
Prior to the present age, our federal and state governments never attempted to define civil marriage. They simply accepted the age-old definition that was handed down to them. Irrespective of its religious implications, defining marriage is an entirely new thing for the government to do, and one in which we naturally all have an interest. In fact, as long as the government confers benefits on married couples that exact a cost from all of us, our interest in what it considers marriage is rather concrete.
As for the Catholic sacrament of Matrimony or marriage rites performed by other churches, the precedent for coercing churches to solemnize same-sex unions has already been set. In both marriage and adoption, the Church forms family relationships that are legally recognized, and the state grants churches the privilege of certifying the legalities on its behalf. In the case of adoption, we have already seen the state revoke that privilege from agencies that refuse to place children with same-sex couples, and if it can do that in one case it can certainly do it in the other.
And I notice that this was not included from the Catechism…...Basing itself on Sacred Scripture which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” (2357)
Bishops Malone approves of the curriculum “Growing In Lows” which teaches youth beginning in kindergarten they have a right to their sexual choices. His words were: I and my predecessor find no errors tuaght in the series. See motherswatch.net part 1 and part 2 which explicitly gives homosexual practices an acceptable option. Furthermore, personhood has been granted to those claimed homosexual. God creates what he abhors, so it appears.
Correction: “Growing In Love” series.
The “Growing In Love” series taught in parochial schools approves the choice of homosexual relations. See motherswatch.net part 1 and 2.
Aren’t Bishops responsible for what is taught in their schools?
Catholic priests can refuse to marry couples for any number of religious reasons. That is true now and it will be true in the future - regardless of the reality of same-sex civil marriage contracts.
There are too many exceptions to the “marriage is for procreation” argument - even for man-woman marriages - for that argument to be valid.
Leslie Hittner said,
That is a nice thought, but there are already valid reasons to think it may be wrong in the near future, at least in Denmark, since it’s already wrong for Evangelical Lutheran churches there: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/denmark-bishop-concerned-same-sex-marriage-law-could-force-unions-on-cathol
But they are still exceptions, as your own language confirms. With same-sex couples, “no procreation” is the rule rather than the exception, and there is no reason to think that that will ever change. The fact is that no healthy man and woman of at least roughly childbearing age can guarantee that they won’t procreate, which is why we still expect them to marry. Not only that, but once you discard the reasons that we expect a man and a woman to make a public commitment to each other before they begin an intimate relationship, it is difficult to imagine a basis for the institution of marriage to exist at all.
The union of a man and a woman is a wild thing with potential consequences for persons beyond themselves, and so demands the construct of a public commitment. Any other kind of relationship is a much tamer thing, and has no need of such formalities.
The U S bishops mandate sexualized catechetics in the schools. This is a masonic principle. Sex education is the root cause of abortion. Bishops only give the appearance to defend the unborn. Sexually active people are easily manipulated and controlled. U S bishops lack the spine to defend the teachings of Holy Mother the Church. The new barbarians being raised in the bishops’ schools are fodder to destroy Catholicism. Only 10% of the teachers in the parochial schools believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church in regards to contraception, abortion and remarriage.
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