Bishop Richard Malone’s point man on the same-sex marriage issue, Marc Mutty, may dismiss U.S. Chief District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s declaration that California’s Proposition 8 is doubly unconstitutional by looking to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Walker laid down markers that should give the proposition’s supporters and the Supreme Court pause.

In Malone’s determination to enshrine the Catholic view of marriage in law and to deny legal standing to gay relationships – even arguing against access to public accommodations – his campaign dismissed the state’s responsibility to regulate such relationships. Judge Walker rejected the claimed right of a majority to impose its morality through legal discrimination as denying equal protection and equal legal standing.

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Same-sex marriage supporters march in San Francisco on Aug. 4 celebrating a federal judge's decision overturning California's Proposition 8. 2010 Associated Press file

Walker dealt a second blow to the anti-same-sex marriage campaign by finding factually baseless Proposition 8 claims that same-sex couples cannot nurture children as well as heterosexual couples and that traditional marriage would be affected by allowing same-sex marriages. Malone and Mutty used both arguments.

Third, Walker’s civics lesson called out Proposition 8 proponents for their use of the scare tactic of arousing fear of homosexuality’s being taught in the schools in order to win.

Malone and Mutty employed the same California tactic when nullification of the Maine Marriage Equality Act was in doubt.

The decision effectively agreed with Maine Catholics who found Malone’s and Mutty’s denial of legal rights and religious liberty, arguments amounting to bigotry and sleazy fearmongering unworthy of the church and embarrassing to Maine Catholics.

Ursula Lukas Slavick

Portland

Something is terribly wrong when one man, Judge Vaughn Walker, can thumb his nose at our “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Millions of Californians cast their well-thought-out votes against homosexual marriage and won handily by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, yet Judge Walker wrote, “That the majority of Californian voters supported Proposition 8 is irrelevant.”

After the Revolutionary War, a Britisher, when asked what he thought of the new American government, replied grudgingly that “it was a noble experiment.” Ironically, it now appears that this experiment has come full circle; for today, monarchistic rule is fast becoming a reality.

King George III was bad enough, yet we now find ourselves once again subjects of men like His Majesty King Walker, who arrogantly appear to think they have as much power over us as kings had before the Magna Carta! The days are here when our unelected rulers are declaring and will increasingly declare that our votes are irrelevant.

However, when a microscopic minority of one, or nine, judges, appoint themselves to be social engineers for the entire nation, it’s time Congress gave some serious thought as to how much power and how much latitude they should be allowed. Of course, Congress could continue to make believe that we are a free republic while our activist kings make law by judicial fiat, or lawmakers could instead establish boundaries that, if not followed, would bring impeachment.

Our precious right to vote was bought with the blood and sacrifice of our Founding Fathers. This fall, let’s stand shoulder to shoulder with them at the polls.

Philip E. Kennard

Windham

The headline of a brief article in a recent paper reads, “Ken Mehlman, ex-chairman of GOP, admits that he’s gay.” The word “admits” connotes a sense of shame, embarrassment or both. The proper term to use here would have been “says” or “states.”

One “admits” to transgressions, errors or crimes. Being gay does not fit any of these categories.

I hope your headline writers will be more careful in the future.

Nancy Brown-Jamison

Center Lovell

Homosexuals and their liberal fellow travelers have been working hard to push the lie that homosexuals are victims of discrimination in marriage.

Homosexuals have exactly the same rights and restrictions as everyone else; there is not any discrimination. Siblings cannot marry; parents and their children cannot marry; there is a minimum age for marriage; it is well known that first cousins should not marry.

Homosexuals are making a childish claim that they should be rewarded with special privileges because they participate in antisocial, repugnant, perverse sexual behavior that can spread deadly disease.

The politically correct crowd thinks that it is right and proper for homosexuals to flaunt their repugnant and offensive behavior in public, while people who are offended should not be permitted to criticize them.

David W. Knudsen

Gray

Saying climate change is false puts planet in great danger

Dr. Alan W. Boone’s Maine Voices column doubting that climate change is human-caused (“Climate change caused by humans? That’s a highly disputable claim,” Aug. 28) was irresponsible. No scientific body of national or international standing is in disagreement with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the one exception being petroleum geologists. Geologists are not climatologists.

The IPCC’s latest report was prepared over six years by experts from over 130 countries. It had over 1,200 authors, and 2,500 more reviewed the documents. Its major conclusions have been exhaustively peer-reviewed. Dr. Boone alleges that there are “thousands of well qualified scientists who protest that the sciences is dubious.” How many of them are climatologists? Would Dr. Boone visit a podiatrist if he had a sore throat?

Creating doubt in people’s minds about risk was a tactic used by the tobacco industry. But unlike the successful use of this tactic in regard to smoking, the consequences of doing nothing about human-caused climate change could be far more serious.

If we wait to act until all uncertainties about climate change are resolved, a tipping point may have been reached beyond which it is too late to prevent catastrophic conditions affecting many future generations.

We are already seeing serious impacts on human populations vulnerable to droughts, flooding, sea level rise and the spread of tropical disease, not to mention on species unable to cope with the pace of climate change.

We Americans face serious ethical questions about the need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions so that others may survive. How we answer these questions will affect the viability of our own future on an interdependent, interconnected planet.

2050, Alan Boone’s description of people shaking their heads about what we were up to may be true. But they may well be shaking their heads that we did not act with urgency to counter climate change.

Sam Saltonstall

Peaks Island

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