WELD – Members of area United Church of Christ congregations and others met Saturday morning at Mt. Blue State Park for a service supporting the Maine human rights law, which protects sexual orientation.
The service was led by Margaret Proctor, a member of the First Congregational Church of Wilton and an ordained United Church of Christ pastor.
Before the event, some attendees hiked up to the summit of Mt. Blue, where Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech was read. Back on relatively level ground, the speech was read again, accompanied by hymns such as “We Shall Overcome,” prayers and testimonials.
Fewer people than expected attended the service, which some of the eight service-goers attributed to the rain. When hiking down the slippery rocks at the summit of Mt. Blue, Douglas Dunlap of Farmington, minister of Wilton’s First Congregational United Church of Christ, explained he chose to hike in the wet weather because he doubted King would cancel a protest “because of a little rain.”
Similar services were held by United Church of Christ members and clergy throughout the state. The observances come about two months before a referendum that, if passed, will remove language protecting sexual orientation from the state’s civil rights bill. Other Maine Christian organizations, including the Christian Civic League, support passage of the referendum.
Speaking to those assembled at the end of the service, Dunlap said he prays “that by the end of this day, the world will know just a bit more love, a bit more brotherhood, than it did when the day began.”
Wilton First Congregational Church member Gerald Michaud of Skowhegan told service attendees it was “wonderful to be with fellow Christians” supportive of equal rights.
He said that since the time of the Pilgrims, the Congregational Church has been active in civil rights issues. “The U.C.C. church was the first American church to ordain an African-American, in the 1700s,” he said, “and the first to ordain a woman,” in the 1800s.
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