Maine Marriage Equality Opponents: Yeah, We’re Lying

Jim Burroway

September 22nd, 2009

Maine voters are being alerted to several blatant falsehoods put forward by supporters of Question 1, the ballot measure to rescind Maine’s recently enacted Marriage Equality bill. The Bangor Daily News editorial staff last week denounced those falsehoods:

Opponents of the law are bringing children into the fray, suggesting their innocence would be sullied if the repeal fails. It\’s a ploy that has been used effectively before; any candidate for elected office who supports sex education is said to favor handing out condoms to kindergarten children. This time, the claim by repeal proponents is that schools would be forced to teach “gay sex education.” It is baseless and betrays an ignorance about education.

…So, the question that remains about the repeal proponents is: Are they knowingly misleading people by claiming schools will be forced to teach the details of gay sex, or are they genuinely ignorant that same-sex couples are among us, and that their children are in our schools?

The Daily News editors asked a very important question, which Portland television station WMTW answered yesterday: Marriage Maine is knowingly misleading Maine voters:

Part of the TV commercial includes a line, “Homosexual marriage taught in public schools whether parents like it. Vote yes on question one.”

…According to the Department of Education, no specific curriculum language exists or would exist that instructs schools to teach about marriage. There are guidelines for students to discuss their own health in context of family life, but nothing explicit. The exact lesson plans are created by an individual school system, some of which already talk about heterosexuality and homosexuality.

Those who made the commercial said the line in the advertisement is not meant to be taken literally. Instead, it’s meant to imply that, in their opinion, if schools currently teach about family life and marriage, discussions about same-sex marriage would likely be included.

…In terms of teaching about marriage in schools, if the issue of same-sex marriage is part of the lesson plan for sex education classes in older grades, parents can opt out of the classes now, according to Maine law — and that would not change. [Emphasis mine]

So get this: those who are act out of their narrow and literall interpretation of the Bible (well, sort of, anyway) don’t want anyone to take their statements literally. The Swiftboating has begun.

Penguinsaur

September 22nd, 2009

So has anyone noticed a trend among the right-wing recently? They say stupid, inflammatory crap that they know not to be true with complete seriousness, they rile up their followers by screaming louder and crazier things without EVER giving the slightest indication they dont mean them, and then as soon as they get called out on a lie/offensive comment/the target of their rants being shot dead in his own church, they turn around and claim it was ‘joking’, ‘a hypothetical’, ‘stating what americans think” or “not literal”

Burr

September 22nd, 2009

Cowards. Total cowards.

If you’re gonna spew it, be proud to stand next to your vomit and say “that’s right I barfed it and I meant it!”

Matt

September 22nd, 2009

Doesn’t the bible also say Thou shall not LIE???

Too bad it doesn’t say Thou shall not SPIN

David C.

September 22nd, 2009

At least the local press is exposing the ruse. That’s more than one would typically expect given much of what we have seen lately in the national discourse surrounding healthcare reform.

It’s interesting to listen to the tone of the debate in Maine. It looks to an outsider, at least from what one sees reported, that the standard tactics of the anti-equality position are now so well known that the lies and distortions may at last stop working.

Our opponents are running out of credibility: most of their junk science, predictions of doom, and the rest of their shrill polemics have lost the ability to cover up the bigotry that has underlain their activism from the beginning.

ragarth

September 23rd, 2009

I wonder how up in arms they’d be at a commercial involving two kids talking:

“Hey, did you here about billy?”

“Yeah, he’s in the hospital, got beat up real good.”

“I know, I broke his knee with a bat. That’ll teach him not to be gay.”

“I know, whadya wanna do to him when he gets out?”

Gravely voice: “Are these the values you want your children to learn? Vote no on Question 1.”

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