According to a July 10 article, “Record number of people’s vetoes filed,” a few religious activists are hoping to veto recent new laws they think don’t conform to their religious beliefs. One activist in particular, Jack McCarthy of Aroostook County applied for 14 people’s veto petitions. Other religious groups, including the Christian Civic League and Mainers for Health and Parental Rights, will also try overturning laws they don’t like but benefit most of us.

But according to Pew, “only 34% of those in Maine who identify as Christians believe that religion in one’s life is important.”

Religious activists want to veto a law that makes illegal the religious conversion therapy of young people who are gay. They mistakenly believe that homosexuality is a choice. That procedure is akin to psychological torture.

Religious activists want to overturn a law that would prevent the illness of unvaccinated children. Parents who do not have their children vaccinated, claiming religious preference, are indirectly guilt of causing the illness or even death of their own children as well as both children and adults that have not been vaccinated.

Unbelievably, these religious activists want to inhumanely overturn a new law that allows a suffering, terminally ill human to avoid an agonizingly miserable death using a legalized medical procedure and have death with dignity. Yet it is very likely these same activists are willing to kill a cat or dog suffering a terminal condition.

There is a First Amendment right to freedom of religion, but that doesn’t give a religious activist the freedom to impose their religious beliefs on others. There also is the right of freedom from religion that religious activists ignore. Let’s keep these new laws. Help do that by politely declining to sign their veto petitions.

 

Jim Chiddix

Waterville

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