Guest Column: Choosing equality for Maine and its marriages
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Bangor Daily News: There is only one conclusion in Rev. Bob Emrich’s Sept. 2 column, “Same-sex marriage would be harmful to society,” that I totally agree with: The vote on Question 1 on Nov. 3 will be one of the most important Mainers ever cast. On Nov. 3 we will decide whether we maintain the Maine tradition of neighbors who live and let live, or if we will adopt the position of Rev. Emrich and his supporters that if you disagree with how your neighbors are living their lives, you have a right, even an obligation, to interfere with their personal decisions. We will decide whether we will embrace Rev. Emrich’s vision of a Maine where there is one set of rules for him and his supporters and another for Mainers with whom he disagrees. Or will we maintain the Maine tradition my neighbors and I support, that everyone should be treated equally under the law.
This referendum is about children and families, but I disagree with Rev. Emrich's assessment of what is at stake. For Emrich, gender and sexual orientation determine who will be a good parent. In fact, every reputable children’s advocacy organization agrees that love and support are what children need most. As Dr. Daniel Summers of the American Academy of Pediatrics testified at the April hearing in Augusta: “It is the quality of parenting that predicts children’s psychological and social adjustment, not the parents’ sexual orientation or gender.” He added that children raised by same-sex couples “do not differ in any important respect from those raised by heterosexual parents.”
All Maine people love their children. But in his crusade to deny marriage equality to thousands of Mainers, Rev. Emrich completely ignores the rights, responsibilities and protections that marriage automatically bestows on couples and on their children. Do we really want to deny these benefits to any Maine child because his or her parents are a same-sex couple?
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