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08/24/2009
Mike Heath & Stand For Marriage Maine: Their bond is unbreakable!
As the Maine marriage fight plays out over the next few months, we guarantee that you're going to hear the official "Stand For Marriage Maine" campaign working overtime to disassociate the "official" fight from the one that Mike Heath has been waging against Maine for decades. We've already seen them do so in a few press outlets, and even Mike Heath himself has acknowledged that the "mainstream" anti-fairness forces don't want "to be aligned with bigotry and homophobia and hatred." And that's because the "official" campaign knows full well that Mr. Heath's rhetoric, which includes such recent lowlights as blaming both bad weather and graffiti on gays and their marriages, will be seen as batsh*t crazy by even some folks who support so-called "traditional marriage." So in order to increase their nice, sweet, "pro-family" face, Stand For Marriage Maine will most certainly try to closet the Heathster.
Well we're here to tell Mainers: DON'T YOU DARE BUY IT FOR A SECOND! Because one only need to do a half-efforted surface scratch to realize that Mr. Heath is an intrinsic, indelible part of Maine's anti-gay effort!
Consider this: Back in February, when the marriage equality writing was on Maine's wall and local anti-fairness activists realized that they would need all the help they could get to put a potential repeal on the November ballot, a group of locals threw what they called a...
The event was a coordinated effort to get a repeal on the ballot. So who spoke? Well, there was Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who serves a national figure associated with any fight for/against marriage that arises in this nation. There was Charla Bansley, a Concerned Women For America employee. Four lawmakers also took the podium. And perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this post: There was an appearance from Bob Emrich, who, along with Marc Mutty (also in attendance), is heading up the "official" Stand For Marriage Maine campaign.
Oh, but wait -- there was one other person on the bill. That person? Yea, you guessed it: Mike Heath:
In fact, if you head over to Mike Heath's Picasa photo stream, you can see all kinds of pics of where these folks are quite literally joined hand-in-hand for the common cause of stopping Joe and Bob from getting civilly hitched. Their booths, their friends, their identities are all intertwined to form one big anti-Pride flag.
And this event wasn't an anomaly. Heath and Emrich have co-sponsored all kinds of soirees over the years, like 2006's "Call to Intercession," for instance. There is simply no detaching the "official"campaign from Mike Heath and his "gays cause sh*tty weather/graffiti/economic downturns" comments. Plus, when you consider that Bob Emrich himself supports "ex-gay" therapy (unlike credible science), you have to wonder if there's really all that much difference between his and Heath's views anyway.
So our job, fellow freedom fighters: To connect these dots over the next two and half months. There is no "official" campaign, or at least there wasn't until this summer. The fight is, always has been, and always will be much deeper than any one ballot initiative. There are certain people and groups who simply do not want LGBT people to have equality under this nation's laws. And in Maine, Mike Heath is not only a part of that group: He has long been a CRUCIAL component with whom the "official" forces have gladly rubbed shoulders! They have to own that.
**ALSO: Listen to some ear-opening audio chats that Mike Heath has had with such fringe figures as Scott Lively, Brian Camenker, and Regina Griggs: Audio: The incendiary fuel behind Maine's 'People's Veto' [G-A-Y]
**ALSO, ALSO: Mike Heath and Stand For Marriage Maine's Marc Mutty sure looked buddy, buddy earlier this year.