True story: Several years ago, anti-gay activist Michael Heath posted an item on his blog saying that if he were ever elected governor, he’d hire me as his press secretary.
That’s when I realized Michael Heath is an idiot.
Apparently, Heath thought I’d make a good spokesman for his hateful agenda because I’m blunt, and TV makes me look fat. Overweight obnoxious guys are always the best salespeople for bigotry.
Unfortunately for my employment prospects in a Heath administration, I wouldn’t fit in at all. Heath is a fundamentalist Christian bent on turning Maine into a theocracy. I’m a beer-swilling libertarian committed to keeping church and state as separate as Lamar Odom and Kim Kardashian.
After a few years of relative silence, Heath, once the head of the Christian Civic League of Maine, resurfaced this spring, announcing he was launching a referendum campaign to repeal the state’s law guaranteeing basic civil rights to people regardless of sexual orientation. At a news conference earlier this month, he claimed he’ll have 500 volunteers at the polls in November to gather at least 62,000 signatures to force a vote on the issue in 2017. And that’s just the beginning of his crusade.
Heath doesn’t just want to force “a behavior that belongs in the closet back into the closet.” He wants to recast Maine’s governmental structure into an Orwellian state of “ordered liberty.” To that end, he’d wouldn’t limit his efforts to ending legal protections for gays, lesbians and transgendered people. He’d make homosexual acts illegal – as in jail sentences for sodomy.
Heath also recognizes that restoring society to his vision of morality will require more than making it once again acceptable to refer to people as “queers” and “fags.” In an April op-ed announcing his return to the political battlefield, he promised “to oppose such concepts as sexual liberation, gay marriage, polyamory, pansexuality and the ‘hook up culture.’”
Hey wait, some of that stuff is practiced by heterosexuals.
That’s right, straight people, Heath is coming after you, too. Not only does he believe all sex outside marriage is wrong, he’d also outlaw divorce. Lamar and Kim would once again be as bound together in misery as church and state.
Abortion? Not for any reason. Legalize marijuana? No way. Drinking? Heath favors reinstituting the prohibition of alcohol. And with sex and drugs banned, how long could it be before he came after rock and roll?
Here’s the really weird part: In spite of favoring every sort of government intrusion into the lives of private citizens, Heath still believes he’s a traditional conservative. In 2013, when Gov. Paul LePage sparked outrage by describing then-state Sen. Troy Jackson as being “the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline,” Heath and fellow homophobe Paul Madore were virtually the only public figures to jump to the guv’s defense.
“Gov. Paul LePage was in good company using an allusion to sodomy to condemn expensive big-government solutions to the challenges confronting Maine people,” Heath announced at a news conference. “Those condemned by the governor’s remark are the very same leaders who are promoting sodomy in our schools.
This fact makes his allusion even more powerful. He used figurative language to reveal a profound truth about our current situation. Maine is being sodomized by the left, especially our impressionable and innocent children.”
If Heath had his way, “big-government solutions” would be replaced by even bigger government mandates, under which the state would control our sex lives and our recreational activities, while strictly censoring school curriculums to protect our youth from any deviance from the Heathian norm.
Mainers passed a law granting civil rights to LGBT citizens in a 2005 referendum. In 2012, we voted to legalize same-sex marriage. Since then, there’s been no discernible decline in public morality.
The state had the second lowest crime rate in the nation in 2015. Teen pregnancy has declined precipitously in the last decade. Our high divorce rate has dropped slightly. And according to U.S. News & World Report, Maine high schools ranked seventh in the nation last year in student achievement.
As the official spokesman for imaginary Gov. Heath, I’d have to say he’s full of crap.
This press conference is over. Additional questions can be emailed to aldiamon@hernihill.net.
and you’re being kind and gentle towards this political wannabe.
Heath could embrace Sharia law, and open our state to Muslim immigrants.
I can’t think of a more apt religious doctrine to support his ideals.
Our women can wear red and black checkered burqas sold (of course) through L.L. Bean.
It bothers me to no end that I know this as I’m not on social media nor do I watch reality TV, but it’s Khloe who is married to Lamar Odom. Kim is married to Kanye. Mr. Heath would no doubt disapprove of both their marriages.
Heath is of no concern or much influence, there are many worse nutjobs in the world, but it sure smells like atheism in here, which is ok, they are also of no concern, at least to me. I’m pretty sure Time, Space, and Matter couldn’t create themselves, and as to the Big Bang, it didn’t create anything, what doesn’t already exist can’t explode, which pretty much explodes that theory. Given those facts, there seems only one logical Creation alternative, the original Elephant in the Room for some people, all of whom are free to realize or deny its existence, again of no concern to me.
Arnold P.
The distance to the furthest object in the universe that we can detect, is further in the sum number of miles, than the sum of all of the seconds since the dawn of civilization.
We are on a planet circling a star, that is but one of trillions. there are more stars than the sum of all of the humans that have ever lived; there are more stars than all of the pennies in the US budget.
So, if, all of that was actually created by a sentient being- why would we have any special importance to it?
We are not the center of anything. We are not special in any way. If there is one unique thing about the human race, it is that we appear to be destined to cause our own extinction.
Time and Space, are two sides of the same thing. It’s space-time. If I say to you, “Meet me at Wal-mart.” – it means nothing to you, if you do not know WHEN to meet, does it?
Matter= Energy. You can convert matter to energy and back again. That is Einstein’s famous equation. You can calculate the conversion to energy by multiplying by the speed of light, squared.
In the beginning, there was only energy. There was no time, as there was no space. There was no matter. If, there was a creator- where was it?
All of the human race is but a smudge of blight, on a tiny speck of plankton, floating in a infinite ocean and we each are but atoms within that sordid blight.
Fact Checker — You’re right, it’s Khloe. I just can’t seem to tell those Kardashians apart. Thanks for the correction.
Cheers,
Al Diamon
I’m with Snow Man up to a point, I’m weighting for Dr Who to get his lap tray up and seat belt undone and step out of TARDIS and tell us “hey gang, it really is flat!”
On a more serious note, at least Khloe and Kim ARE married
Heath doesn’t seem to understand that his agenda would be impossible to implement. In 2003, the US Supreme Court struck down all state sodomy statutes, as applied to sexual activity between consenting adults in private settings, as violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (see Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)). Therefore, no state statute could possibly be passed or enforced which would criminalize same sex sexual intimacy. Furthermore, in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), the US Supreme Court held that all state bans against same sex marriage are violative of both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, striking down all such measures in strong and unambiguous language. Same sex marriage is thus legal in all 50 states (and all US territories), and will remain such forever.
How, then, could Heath implement his agenda in Maine? The answer is simple — he couldn’t.
No state supreme court, or state constitution, or state statute, can override a decision handed down by the US Supreme Court (this is specifically and unambiguously guaranteed by the Supremacy Clause of Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the US Constitution). This Clause states the following:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
The judicial power of the United States is vested in the US Supreme Court, and in all such “inferior” federal courts as Congress may establish. This is made clear by Article III of the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court is the final arbiter of all matters implicating interpretation of the US Constitution, federal statutes, and US treaties. This was made clear in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), in which Chief Justice Justice Marshall, writing for a UNANIMOUS Court, held that:
“It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.”
Furthermore, more than 60% of the American people now support same sex marriage. How, then, could Heath possibly implement his agenda?
Most Americans now know somebody who is openly gay — and with such knowledge comes empathy, compassion, and friendship. It would therefore be repugnant to the majority of Americans to refer to homosexuals as “fags,” “queers,” “homos,” or any other of the epithets so dear to Heath and his acolytes. Relatives and friends of gay persons simply would not tolerate such ugly and derogatory comments.
In short, Heath would do everything possible to return this country to the Dark Ages. The problem for Heath is that we live in a democracy, and the majority of the people do not believe in establishing a government in which the Church has sway over affairs of state. With support for anti-discrimination measures running as high as 80%, and with support for same sex marriage running as high as 61% (according to the latest Gallup poll), Heath simply would not be able to force his “vision” for America past the American people themselves.
PHILIP CHANDLER
@ArnoldP — the Big Bang theory explains the beginning of time, space, and matter. Asking what happened “before” the Big Bang occurred is to misapprehend the nature of time itself — time is elastic, and can contract or expand, depending on circumstances explained by Einstein’s general and special theories of relativity.
Similarly, to ask what existed “before” space was created is to misapprehend the nature of space itself. The Big Bang theory explains that we live in a system which is bound by constraints of time and space, and that our understanding of the universe is limited by our ability to understand the fact that neither time nor space existed “before” the Big Bang took place. When the Big Bang occurred, both time and space themselves began.
There is nothing inconsistent with the Big Bang theory and a belief in a creator — in fact, I regard the Big Bang as proof of the existence of God. However, I do not for one second believe that the Big Bang occurred exclusively for the benefit of human beings — I regard such thinking as the epitome of human arrogance and hubris. There exist AT LEAST 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the OBSERVABLE universe — and some estimates put the number of stars in the OBSERVABLE universe as very much greater than this (the discovery of massive elliptical galaxies, more than 20 times the size of our Milky way, which contains between 200,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 stars, has thrown previous estimates into disarray). Furthermore, some parts of the universe are so far away from us (having been flung so far from us by the Big Bang) that light from those parts has yet to reach us — which means that there exists an unknown number of stars in that part of the universe which cannot yet be seen.
The probably of intelligent life in this universe being limited to our little planet — which orbits a very mediocre little star in a relative backwater of a very mediocre galaxy in a very unremarkable part of the OBSERVABLE universe — is so incredibly slim as to defy both common sense and a basic understanding of how life as we know it is organized. Being limited in our imaginations to understanding life as we know it to life forms based on DNA or on RNA further hobbles us in understanding how life on other planets could be organized.
PHILIP CHANDLER
@snow man — Thank you for providing yet another cogent and lucid explanation of the nature of our universe. There are, in fact, more stars in the OBSERVABLE universe than there are grains of sand on every beach and in every desert in the world (and this does not take into consideration the stars which are so far from us that light from those stars has not yet had time to reach us). To assume, therefore, that we are alone, and that no other intelligent life forms exist in the universe, is to illuminate the full depths of human arrogance and hubris.
I believe that civilizations exist which have managed to harness the tremendous amounts of energy necessary to open and to maintain “wormholes” — these are shortcuts between different parts of the universe which are linked based on “folding” time and space. The time will come when programs such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (S.E.T.I.) will detect such other intelligent life forms. The only question then remaining is whether we will be worthy of discovery by such life forms.
PHILIP CHANDLER
Heath essentially embraces the version of “Christian” Sharia law epitomized in Margaret Atwood’s novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.” This novel was inspired by Atwood’s genuine fear, in the early 1980s, that the so-called “Moral Majority” could have taken over the US government and forced a theocratic agenda upon the United States, eliminating democratic institutions such as elections, removing US Supreme Court Justices (and even executing them), removing federal judges from office (and even executing them), replacing Congress by a cabinet of Christian theocrats, and destroying American concepts such as the separation of church and state (in fact, Atwood genuinely feared that the United States could turn into a hostile enemy of Canada, based on Canada’s ideals of separation between church and state, belief in democracy, and belief in Western-style government).
PHILIP CHANDLER
Philip Chandler: Unless- Trump wins, and he gets to load the Supreme Court with Wackos.
At least three judges will be replaced in the next 4 years and nearly all of them will be in the next 8.
The court can, if it wants to, overturn its earlier rulings. Tradition has mostly prevented that from happening, but it could.
No more Roe v. Wade.(legal abortion) No more Brown v. Education (segregated schools) Engel v. Vitale (school Prayer), Obergefell v. Hodges( gay marriage), Lawrence v. Texas (sodomy) and more.
Think it all can’t happen? Did enough people in 1934 realize where things were headed?
Philip Chandler:
Our comments passed by one another. I had a pretty good idea that I was basing my comparisons on very conservative estimates, but as I have been accused of hubris and exaggeration I wanted to err on the side of caution.
As to the wormhole idea, I think- why would they want to?
It has also occurred to me that when you dig into string theory, perhaps the entire universe is just a song being sung. For all we know, the whales are more in tune with the creator than man will ever be.
I really do feel that we are approaching a world crisis not seen since the 1930’s.
Sounds like Nazi Germany all over again
Obviously Ron White’s well-known observation is correct.
Talk about wackos, what wormhole did you guys crawl out of?
I like Big Bang Theory, especially Penny!
“The state’s law guaranteeing basic civil rights to people regardless of sexual orientation.”
Sarcasm begin
Aww, it was nice of Uncle Sammy to give people basic civil rights! I sure am glad the guberment gave my parents permission to have kids and allow them to breath oxygen too. Sarcasm end.
Why people believe the government grants people their rights is beyond me, Imagine a country where people are free to exercise their “God given” Rights and the government only becomes involved when someone violates another persons personal rights. (IE: Property crime, Assault etc…)
Phil and the Snowman are applauding the separation of church and state to say that church controlling guberment is bad, They hold the contradictory belief that state controlling the church is perfectly fine. I would have to assume that Phil much like the snowman thinks the bill of rights and constitution are outdated pieces of paper while holding the stunningly contradictory belief that the laws they like are “The Law of the Land” because they are on a piece of paper.
I would also have to believe that like Snowman, Phil probably hasn’t met a democrat he would not defend nor a constitutional republican he would stand up for, BTW- This not in defense of this politician or any other that I say this. I am a libertarian and do my best to avoid the dichotomy you two find yourselves in.
Its 1984
“O’Brien spends the next few months torturing Winston in order to change his way of thinking — to employ the concept of doublethink, or the ability to simultaneously hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind and believe in them both. Winston believes that the human mind must be free, and to remain free, one must be allowed to believe in an objective truth, such as 2 + 2 = 4.
O’Brien wants Winston to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but Winston is resistant.”
Pure, I tried to hang with your rambles, but to plagiarize Homer Simpson ‘for once in my life I’m confused’.
Pure:
Too much of my time is spent wondering how and why you decided to use the word you made up for government.
You do bring up an interesting point that many constitutionalists, (esp. those who are big on the Bill of Rights – mostly the first two) miss.
A counter argument was made when the Bill of Rights was drafted, that it was not only unnecessary, but a mistake, because it should be assumed that all people were entitled to all rights, except for those specifically relinquished for the greater good via the social contract and written in law.
Many who feel strong faith fall to grasp the somewhat abstract concept that to ensure freedom of of religion for all, we must also ensure freedom FROM religion.
In an instance where, for example, a baker is asked to sell a wedding cake for a gay marriage, it would seem to be reasonable to allow him to refuse. However, when you apply this to all the possible scenarios, it breaks down.
Take the instance of a supermarket employee who converts to a religion that has diet restrictions. Can he then object to the store selling food products that violate his faith?
The choice should be the employee’s. He can chose to find a different job that doesn’t require him to deal with a product that violates his beliefs. If a baker doesn’t want to sell cakes to those who are legally entitled to buy them, then get out of that business.
Otherwise, we are allowing one religion to infringe on another or to infringe on non-religion, which is the equal inverse.
:)
Allow me to explain, I believe what we have today is a bastardized, illegitimate fed Government. In referring to such an institution I use the bastardized, Illegitimate word Guberment.
I agree it does get missed and I agree with the notion that a bill of rights was not really necessary.
I am not a religious person by any means, I am a very spiritual person and I believe that man would be better off with all laws being as few and as localized as possible.
I understand what your saying, But do you understand the only way to ensure that bold part of your argument is by limiting federal govt powers? IE: churches don’t make laws, they don’t dole out punishment, they don’t force anything upon you- THE GUBERMENT does….
It does not break down at all, Yes he can find other employment and a gay man or woman can find another baker- At what point will your guberment force me to befriend people I don’t like because its not fair to them that I have friends and there not included? Should we be forced to include anyone that we are told to include? If not why would this be different when we establish a business? Should I be forced to sell goods to whoever wants them or can I pick my customers? I feel I should be able to do this for any reason I want to pick even if its that you drive a BMW and I hate BMW’s….
If a business wont have someone as a customer, how does this harm a consumer? And why in the world would someone want to support a business that will only have you as a customer if they are forced to do so?