Thursday, June 24, 2010

The League: A Look Back

It was my honor to work for the Christian Civic League of Maine for more than two decades.  I was there when the ministry began creeping towards compromise on the evil of abortion.  I, in fact, helped create the “strategy."

I later learned that compromise is not a strategy.  It is cowardice.  God doesn’t compromise, and politics doesn’t have to be about “cutting the deal” or finding a middle way.  Politics is ennobled by truth, courage, beauty and the power of good ideas.

I was also there when the League decided not to rest on its laurels as the homosexual movement bulldozed the state’s morals.  We decided as a matter of political strategy to go on the offense with the “gay” movement.  We reasoned that they would achieve their goals faster with spineless, compromising, deal-making, politicians than with Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad and the Average Joe.


I was there in 1991 when the League went to the people of Maine and suggested that homosexuality should be decided by the people in public voting -- and not by the State House in back room dealing.  The Secretary of State wouldn’t give us petitions.  We took him to court.  Two years, and fifty thousand dollars later, we got our petition.

Suffice it to say that there is a long public history involving me, the League and the “happy” movement in Maine.  It is all there for the reading in newspapers and libraries.

While I stuck to my guns believing that the people should make the decision about whether sodomy would be accepted as a qualification for legal protection, and even the holy estate of matrimony, the politicians went ahead and enacted “happy” policies anyway.   The Roman Catholic leadership, under the influence of the left-leaning Maine Democratic Party, urged it along behind the scenes and never once fought the enactment of the gay agenda.

The League gave them countless opportunities to do the right thing.  They never did.

Paul Madore, my friend from Lewiston, did the right thing.  This Roman Catholic father to nine, and grandfather to more than twenty, always did the right thing on this issue.  He still does.  He is the only Roman Catholic to ever serve on the board of the League.  I appointed him to help me with this fight. I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with many other Catholic lay people to defend life and hold back the normalization of perversion.

Unlike recent reports, there was never any “rift” between the League and the Catholics. On the contrary, there was a close and unprecedented cooperation with Catholic lay people. On many occasions I found them stronger and better allies than those on the Religious Right -- stronger in the fight to defend life, more willing to sacrifice to defend traditional marriage.

After two decades I left the League.  In September of last year I resigned.  Just weeks before the statewide vote to preserve marriage I left in disgust.

National “pro family” forces finally turned their attention to Maine and did what I’d been suggesting for nearly two decades.  They came to our tiny state with all the modern, elite tools of political warfare -- money, strategists and focus groups.  I learned over the years that monied interests are heavy, massive and dense, like the earth.  The only way to have them in your campaign solar system -- if you must have them there at all -- is with a heavier force to keep them in their proper orbit.  That is why, the only time I cooperated in a Roman Catholic guided campaign (the campaign against partial birth abortion), I suggested early on that the priests and philosophers must play a prominent role in shaping and leading the campaign.  Every solar system must have a center of gravity, and our sun was to be the Son of God, and His word, the Bible.

That didn’t happen in the partial birth abortion campaign.  And at the end of the campaign, driven by pollsters and pragmatism, we produced and widely distributed a television advertisement featuring a pro abortion woman saying partial birth abortion “just goes too far.”  We lost that campaign.

I vowed never to put myself in that position again.

That is why I resigned when I did.  I could see what was coming.  I was right about everything except for the outcome.  I thought we were going to lose.  

While we won that campaign, we lost the war a long time ago in the halls of the State House.  And, on the final weekend of the campaign to save marriage, Focus on the Family and the Roman Catholic Chancery ran a television advertisement in which they allowed that legal rights based on sodomy were morally justified.  They even went so far as to suggest that more “gay rights” might be appropriate.

While I left the leadership post I loved, and was divinely appointed to occupy for a time, I am glad that I was nowhere near that compromise.  History may not be kind to the forces that led last year’s campaign to save marriage.  I did more than I should have last year to attempt to shape that campaign.

It is a hard thing to lose faith in trusted institutions.  

This week brought news about the League’s future.  Things have been pretty quiet since I left.  I’ll allow you to be the judge of their plans.  Here are the articles:

http://www.mpbn.net/News/MPBNNews/tabid/1159/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3762/ItemId/12676/Default.aspx

http://www.svweekly.com/joom1511/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2829 

No Christian organization should ever invite discussion on the issue of abortion and homosexual marriage.  Nor should they use “a softer, gentler tone.” Our compassion must be reserved for the victims of these crimes, not the perpetrators. Compassion may be extended to the thief who repents, not to the thief who is in the act of breaking down a door.  

I have teamed up with the American Family Association.  I have always admired Don Wildmon’s fighting spirit.  I believe that this institution will continue to demonstrate the fortitude to stand strong against the sodomy rights movement, and FOR the common sense of civil marriage.

All legal rights and definitions that encourage or allow sex outside of marriage must be repealed.  There is no such thing as a truly happy “gay” person.  An entertaining yarn must be allowed to masquerade as the truth for a society or religion to accept this fiction -- that sexual sin makes someone “gay.”

You will forgive my use of the term “Sodomy” and “Sodomite.” In my own humble way I try to look at the world as God does. I am not sure that when God sees a gay pride parade He sees a group of defenseless victims striving after dubious or non-existent rights. He may in fact be reminded of other times and other places. 

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