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I believe in equal rights and equal opportunity for all Maine citizens. I strongly support Maine’s anti-discrimination laws, and I voted to uphold Maine’s marriage equality law in 2009. I believe that government has no business making rules for religion, and religion has no business making rules for government.
Please watch my promise to lead the move to full equality for all Maine people here:
filmed by Harpswell Community TV at the Coastal Journal Gubernatorial Debate.
At a meeting with the General Student Senate at University of Maine on Tuesday, February 9th, Independent gubernatorial candidate Elliot Cutler indicated his support for same-sex marriage, saying:
“This is a question that to me is beyond politics. Government in my view has no business making rules for religion, and religion has no business making rules for government.”
You can download the original article in here.
This has been a gorgeous week. One RMD — Real Maine Day — after another. Now, Labor Day is just about upon us. The kids are back in school, and the summer folks are mostly gone. The sounds of autumn in Maine are reassuring — dry twigs cracking underfoot, leaves blown down a dirt road by a stiff northwest wind, loons on a lake now so quiet that their calls easily pierce the night air.
Unfortunately, this fall season also is going to bring to Maine a cacophony that isn’t native to our state — though it is also, sad to say, a racket that is increasingly familiar. These are the sounds of harshly negative political campaigns, brought to you by political organizations often located far away from Maine.
That debate was Maine at its best — a civic culture that distinguishes Maine from every other state in the Union. This fall, millions of dollars are going to be spent on television ads screaming at us in a tone that couldn’t be more different from the legislature’s debate, or less native to Maine.
I support marriage equality, and I will vote NO on Question 1. I will contribute to the campaign to sustain the Maine law. But I also have real respect for those who disagree with me, and I know that they feel just as honestly and strongly about their position as I do about mine.
My hope is that voices on both sides of the debate over Question 1 this fall will be restrained and respectful — and that those voices won’t grow so loud that they wipe out the memories of democracy at work in Augusta, tarnish our civic culture in Maine and drown out the autumn sounds of the twigs, the leaves and the loons.