The RECORD

By Mike Hein
I've voted.

Actually, it was a couple of weeks ago now, by absentee ballot. My wife and I filled out the Maine State absentee ballot request forms, and I picked them up at the Augusta City Hall. I will be at the League office on Election Day, most likely answering calls from League supporters who seek last minute voting advice from a trusted Christian source. My wife voted by absentee ballot because she values my opinion and knowledge regarding the local candidates and referendum questions.

As you can see by the picture of my ballot, the first race listed is not for Governor, but for United States Senate. I did not vote for Senator Olympia Snowe for re-election, due to her long record of pro-abortion votes in the Senate. Instead, I voted my conscience and voted for the Christian alternative, write-in candididate for U.S. Senate, Michael A. Beardsley of Ellsworth. He registered with the State of Maine as an official write-in candidate months ago, and his candidacy announcement was covered here in the Record. In order to make it a valid write-in vote, I had to write his name as "Beardsley, Michael A., Ellsworth" and fill in the arrow by the write-in space. Most likely he will not win, but I am committed to voting my Christian values.

The next race on the ballot is for Governor of Maine. I voted for State Senator Chandler Woodcock. This should come as a surprise to nobody, since I signed his candidate's petition this spring to get him on the Republican primary ballot, and contributed $5 at the same time for his campaign to qualify for Maine's Clean-Elections public funding. I voted for him in the Republican primary this past June, and was excited when he won the GOP nomination for Governor. Senator Woodcock has a strong pro-life and pro-traditional marriage voting record from his years in the State Senate, and is a lay Baptist minister. He is a Christian man of faith and he deserves our vote.

Next on the Maine State ballot is the race for U.S. Congress. Augusta, where I live, is in the 1st Congressional District. My choices were Democrat Tom Allen, Republican Darlene Curley, and a Green Party candidate. All three are stridently pro-abortion and pro-homosexual marriage. None of them got my vote. I wrote-in the name of George W. Rodrigues of Westbrook. Dr. Rodrigues is a Christian family man and League supporter. I admire him and his family tremendously, they are great Christian witnesses.

I wish I lived in the 2nd Congressional District (points north of Augusta) where L. Scott D'Amboise is running for the U.S. Congress. I would vote for him. He is the only Maine candidate for public office that I heard confess the name of Jesus Christ as his own personal Lord and Saviour. He is a moral, ethical Christian family man. I've prayed for him and made a financial donation to his campaign. Regardless of how things go for him Tuesday, his campaign alone has caused me as a Christian not to lose hope.

For State Senate in Kennebec County, I voted for His voting record as State Representative has been pro-traditional marriage, but also mixed on abortion. He is far better than his opponent though. I pray that he changes his views on abortion, and sees that the lives of unborn children are sacred. I cast my vote for him with reservations. It was my most difficult vote to cast this year.

For State Representative in House District 57, I wrote-in my neighbor, James P. Melcher of Augusta. Dr. Melcher is a Political Science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington and an Elder at his local Episcopal Church here in Augusta. The Democrat candidate in the open House seat is endorsed by the pro-homosexual marriage organization Equality Maine, and her Republican opponent is on record in a local newspaper interview earlier this year as supporting homosexual civil unions, and open to the idea of supporting homosexual marriage. As a Christian, I could not vote for either Patsy Crockett or Rachel Ellis. I understand that one of them will win, and pray that the Holy Spirit changes their hearts with regard to God's Word in the Bible about the abomination of homosexual sin.

As for the Taxpayer Bill of Rights citizen's initiative (Question 1), I voted for it.

As for the Constitutional Amendment (Question 2), I voted against it.

Locally, I voted for Roger Katz for Mayor of Augusta, for David Rollins for Augusta City Council, and for Darek Grant for the Augusta Board of Education.

Americans pride themselves on plain talk and fair dealing, and as a result, they have procured themselves leaders like Washington, Lincoln, and Harry Truman. They have little patience for duplicity and shady deals, and that is why a brilliant and effective leader like Richard Nixon is still disliked by so many people. Nixon always held his cards close to his chest, and a part of him remained walled-off and inaccessible to the American public. Schemers by their very nature invite distrust.

Governor Baldacci's own lack of candor may prove to be his downfall in November. Ask nine out of ten people if Governor Baldacci supports gay marriage, and they will answer "no." But the Governor has admitted in his own writings that he is at least open to the idea, and the facts prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that if the Governor is reelected, he will sign gay marriage into law.

The Governor has been careful to keep this out of sight of the voters. When a gay marriage bill was introduced in the Legislature last year, the Governor's spokesman, Lee Umphrey, said that the Governor felt the "time was not right" for such legislation. Gay rights activists joined in the deception by stating that the Governor was against gay marriage under all conditions. They failed to tell the public that the Governor was against gay marriage only at the present time.

Indeed, the Governor's own website says the following: "There is currently no law or bill passed in the Legislature to permit same-sex marriage in Maine. I will consider that legislation very carefully at the time. However that time is not now." The plan from the beginning was to win incremental progress in gay rights until the time was right to introduce a bill on gay marriage. That time will be in 2007 after the Governor is reelected.

I find this sort of duplicity fascinating. The Governor gave me his personal assurance he was opposed to gay marriage when he interrupted a televised debate between me and Ted O'Meara just before the gay rights vote last November. He stated he was categorically opposed to gay marriage. No doubt the Governor said this to influence the outcome of the vote on gay rights.

After the vote, Equality Maine, the state's largest gay rights organization, soft-peddled the issue of gay marriage, since most Mainers are strongly opposed to the idea. When Baldacci appeared at the Equality Maine Annual Banquet last year, there was no mention of the subject. But now, two months before the gubernatorial election, gay rights advocates can barely control their enthusiasm.

Equality Maine has decided the time is right for a full court press on gay marriage. The latest offering on their website is "Let's Talk about [Gay] Marriage", which concludes that "It's time to have an honest and open discussion about gay marriage." According to Evan Wolfson of the organization Freedom to Marry, a gay marriage bill is "pending and has a chance of moving forward in Maine." With the most liberal governor in the U.S. as an ally, the prospect for success is great.

Along with gay marriage, we can expect a bill to be introduced in the Legislature, similar to an existing law in Massachusetts, which will mandate lessons against homophobia in our public schools.

The Governor needs to be forthcoming with the people of Maine. Does he or does he not support gay marriage? If he does not, he ought to say so in plain terms. Otherwise, the public will be right in concluding that a vote for John Baldacci is a vote for gay marriage.

The staff of The RECORD was treated to a good laugh this morning when they read a letter to the Kennebec Journal accusing Chandler Woodcock of wanting to set up a theocratic tyranny over the people of Maine.

One of the staff had to run to consult the dictionary to see if this is exactly what Chandler Woodcock wants. He found the following. Webster's Dictionary defines a theocracy as 1) the rule of a state by God, or a god; 2) a government by priests claiming to rule with divine authority; 3) a country governed in this way; 4) a group of clerics with political power. As far as we know, Woodcock has not yet called for any of these things. Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

The letter, though laughable, reveals the strategy the mainstream media plan to use against Woodcock in the upcoming election. Woodcock will be called a dangerous fanatic, a Bible-thumper, a Creationist bumpkin who just crawled out of the Maine woods. Yet this is a dangerous approach for the Left to take, since the majority of Maine people share Woodcock's beliefs. To call Woodcock backwards is to call the people of Maine backwards.

Sadly, the Kennebec Journal needs to be reminded that it is no sin to believe in the Bible, honest government; and control by the people, not government. By criticizing Woodcock and the people of Maine, the mass media are once again revealing themselves to be elitists who are hopelessly out of touch with the people. Rather than a liability, Woodcock's background as a Vietnam veteran, a Maine Guide, a basketball coach, and a former school teacher will lead him on to victory in November. Only if Woodcock fails to exploit his deep ties to the people of Maine, will he go down to defeat in November, and rightly so.

It is no coincidence that the letter calling Woodcock a religious fanatic appears in the Kennebec Journal at the start of the Labor Day weekend. Labor Day marks the start of campaigning in earnest, and the letter was intended to be the opening salvo in the effort to label Woodcock as a populist, a man who holds traditional beliefs regarding religion and civic life. If Woodcock is wise, he will embrace the label, rally the people of Maine to his side, and move on to victory in November.

By Mike Heath

Much is being made these days about Representative Stan Moody's Christian Policy Institute. My first inclination was not to address the issue, in order not to give it more attention than it deserves. I do not think the newly-formed Christian Policy Institute has much of a future, because it is based on a misunderstanding of the problems which confront our society.

In an age in which there is much confusion regarding the nature of man and how society should be governed, there is always the danger that wrong ideas will take root in the mind of the public, and flourish; and for that reason I want to briefly address the ideas underlying the Christian Policy Institute.

First, it is not correct to state that the Christian Policy Institute is taking a new approach to Christian activism. Christian activism has been present in Maine in some form or other for centuries, and in the West for millennia. The question has always been which issues are to be addressed. The issue of poverty is nothing new, for example; Our Lord Himself having pointed out that "The poor you will always have with you." Similarly, a concern for persecuted minorities is nothing new, Maine having been home to one of the nation's foremost abolitionists.

But which issue is Christian Activism to address first: racism? poverty? social injustice? All these are symptoms of an underlying disorder in society, the failure of society to follow God's laws. I do not mean a theocracy should be imposed on society. I mean that it is necessary for a society to implement the divine, eternal moral law, which can be known from the Bible, and by reason. To the extent that a society is based upon this law, it flourishes; to the extent that it departs from this law, it withers and dies.

Stan Moody is part of a political party which routinely flaunts its absolute indifference, if not open hostility to these laws, through its support of abortion, the tolerance of homosexuality, and the failure to respect private property through confiscatory taxation. We may even say that the party to which Stan Moody belongs makes political capital out of breaking these divinely-ordained laws. As an alternative, that same party proposes an economic solution for each of society's ills. All will be well, they claim, if only each and every individual in society is given enough economic opportunity.

But this is to confuse cause and effect! The single mother who toils in the factory to put bread on the table for her family, is crushed by poverty because God's laws regarding the family were broken. The drug addict and alcoholic who need help, are in a condition of dependency because they too have broken God's laws. Virtue and a scrupulous observance of the laws pertaining to the family yield a sound economy and a healthy society, not vice versa. The wrong views concerning the nature of the economy "for example, the idea of the welfare state, espoused by the party to which Stan Moody belongs" open a Pandora's box of social ills including illegitimacy, broken families, and chronic dependence on the state. The fundamental defect of Stan Moody's Christian Policy Institute is that it puts the cart before the horse. It can never hope to be successful, since it is based on an erroneous view of man and society.

True prosperity and social harmony are produced by a virtuous populace which obeys God's laws, and that will always be the focus of the Christian Civic League. To believe otherwise, is to pursue a delusion, which has already been proven wrong in theory and in practice.

A group calling itself the "Christian Policy Institute" announced the appointment of liberal Democrat Jeremy Fisher to its Board of Directors last month. The Christian Policy Institute was founded by former Republican politician Stan Moody. The minister represents Manchester in the House of Representatives. He was elected a Republican, then changed his party affiliation to Democrat while in office.

When the League defended the mainstream definition of marriage last year Moody allowed himself to be used by the left in an effort to confuse Christians. Mainers narrowly rejected the League's second people's veto of "gay" rights last November.

In the press release announcing Fisher's appointment Moody twice mentions the Christian Civic League of Maine by name. He claims the century old Christian ministry is trying to "impose" its views on others. He also alleges that the League supports the "persecution of minorities."

Moody's most provocative statement announces that Christians who feel called to evangelize instead of love are tragic figures.