FARMINGTON – A crowd of more than 200 people crammed into Thomas Auditorium at University of Maine at Farmington to hear Michael Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, speak Tuesday night.
Many gay rights supporters wore green shirts while others held signs urging people to repeal an anti-discrimination law passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. John Baldacci in March.
Speaking for the UMF College Republicans before the talk, group Vice Chairman Shawn Roderick said the group decided to invite Heath so the other side of the issue could be heard. Other members of the student group, which organized the event, said they just want to see more tolerance on campus for conservative viewpoints.
“We just want to let people know it’s OK to vote yes (on Question 1 which would repeal the law),” Roderick said.
“We’re not taking a stance; we’re encouraging both points of view,” agreed Chairman Emily Davis.
On the quad outside Mantor Library, more than 150 mostly green-shirted students attended a rally before Heath’s appearance.
“We’re not an angry mob,” warned Jeanine Alberto, a campus organizer. “We have nothing to be angry about. We’re celebrating the end of discrimination.”
She urged the crowd to be respectful and allow for others’ opinions while attending the event.
Her urging apparently heeded, barely a sound was heard during Heath’s speech or the question-and-answer period afterwards, though a couple of comments elicited minor hissing or polite applause.
Heath spoke of the decline of art and music in the modern world, saying that art of an earlier age strove to attain beauty from the ideals of order, wholeness and harmony.
Art is an expression of man’s soul, he said. And modern art was “championed by left-leaning political forces, the goal being to alienate the masses from the existing social order and to demoralize the opposition.”
He told students they would do well not to challenge the ideas of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud or Charles Darwin on campus, calling them the “gods of the modern age.”
He said Marx’s concept was “a doctrine of soullessness” and Freud’s sexual and Darwin’s evolutionary theories reduce man to the level of animals.
Joined by Lewiston’s Paul Madore, the two answered several questions that were submitted.
Heath told the audience that up until two years ago, sodomy in many states was illegal.
“Now we’re going to protect people (who sodomize),” he said. “It’s a profoundly negative and long way to travel,” he said.
Homosexuals have the same rights as everyone else, Madore said, adding that he is being discriminated against as a private contractor for his outspoken views.
“We’re not haters. Making moral distinctions does not make us haters,” he said.
“You’re ruining America by doing it this way,” Heath told gay rights activists. If the walls between the legislative and judiciary branches of government are broken down, they ruin the checks and balances in this country, he said. Activists should go about this through the legislative means, he said.
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