Rainbow bullies have hijacked Maine’s state government and our allegedly democratic institutions. After winning majorities in the Maine State Senate and House by just a few hundred votes, the far-left Democrats are governing like they’ve got some kind of mandate. They don’t. Yet their thuggish abuses of power now pose serious threats to Maine’s democratic institutions. Thanks to these undemocratic thug tactics, the precedent now set is that Maine’s House Speaker can strip voting rights from members of the opposite party if he’s personally offended by or disagrees with a Facebook post.
To recap the past few weeks of inglorious Maine political history: Auburn Rep. Laurel Libby, a Christian Republican woman — an actual woman — has been disenfranchised by Maine Democrats. Libby lost the right to vote in the House over a social media post House Speaker Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford) and Majority Leader Matt Moonen (D-Portland) didn’t like. Libby’s post exposed Maine’s violation of federal civil rights law and criticized the state-sanctioned policy of forcing female athletes to compete (aka lose) against male athletes. Libby’s post included a publicly available image of a male athlete who says he’s a girl celebrating his inevitable victory over female athletes. Fecteau and Moonen, both openly gay men with histories of activism, were apparently offended by Libby’s view that only girls should play girls’ sports.
The post — despite the hurt feelings of the Rainbow Bullies — nonetheless served as indisputable proof that Maine was violating Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Title IX), as well as President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” Executive Order. The ensuing firestorm culminated in a clash between Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), who has religiously backed policies rooted in transgenderism, and President Trump.
When asked whether Maine would obey federal civil rights law, Mills demurred, setting off a round of investigations into Maine’s Department of Education and Health and Human Services. Those investigations have confirmed that Maine is, indeed, violating federal civil rights laws, findings that will likely cause Maine to lose even more federal funding than it already has. In other words, Maine Democrats and the governor have prioritized the far-left transgender agenda and their pride ahead of critical federal funding for Maine’s students and working people. If Maine doesn’t change course, the findings will also result in the U.S. Justice Department prosecuting those responsible for the civil rights violations. Who’s your money on in that might: Maine’s Aaron Frey or U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi?
From the delivery date of those federal finding letters, Maine has ten days before the prosecutions begin. In the mean time, House Democrats are intent on doubling or even tripling down on their misogynistic crusade against Rep. Libby and girls’ sports. Libby has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the disenfranchisement, and the case has been assigned to an LGBTQ+ activist appointed to the bench in Rhode Island by President Joe Biden. That change of venue occurred because the mother of the male athlete from the infamous pole-vaulting picture is a clerk in Maine’s federal district court. Thus, Libby, her constituents, and the House Republicans are unlikely to get expedited relief for this simmering constitutional crisis.
Throughout a long procedural drama that ran from Thursday afternoon and into Friday morning, the stakes of Libby’s fight were made crystal clear, and the injury to democracy made permanent. After a transgender individual donning a priests collar offered a prayer to diversity, Fecteau and Moonen proceeded to ram through the first part of what will be a record-breaking $12 billion spending package — all while Libby was not allowed to vote. In other words, while the gay white dudes running the House Democrat caucus elevated a man who pretends to be a woman with the honor of being House Chaplain, they silenced and disenfranchised an actual woman who spoke out in defense of women’s rights. The Rainbow Bullies did this all while believing, perhaps sincerely, that they are the vanguards of civil rights, the common good, and decency.
If you feel like this is some dystopian fiction written by Christian Right extremists in the 1980s or perhaps you’re taking crazy pills, that’s understandable. The events are mind-boggling on multiple levels, especially considering the Maine Democrats have now, despite multiple opportunities to take corrective action, anchored themselves indelibly to a toxic political issue that 80 percent of American adults oppose.
What we’re witnessing isn’t just bad policy and bad politics. It’s a full-on assault on sanity, science, and the rights of every taxpayer and voter in this state, as well as the traditions of the State House as an institution, to the extent anyone still cares about that. The events of the past few weeks have uniquely captured national attention, but this is far from an aberration. This is what six years of Janet Mills and her thugocracy have wrought: an arrogant and dismissive group of far-left radicals bending Maine democracy to the breaking point. To what end? This same group left-wing gangsters has already stuffed rainbow flags down every Mainers throats.
Maine’s now a place where taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for genital mutilation surgeries—termed “gender-affirming care” by the Orwellian left—even for minors. Last session, Mills signed a law letting 16- and 17-year-olds get irreversible sex-change drugs without their parents knowing. Our schools are draped in “pride progress” flags, and every bank, hospital, and grocery store has to pay tribute to groups like Equality Maine or Out Maine. “School-based clinics” are popping up everywhere, claiming they’re about “health” while tax records show they’re just prescription drug-pushing fronts. It doesn’t stop there. In Maine’s prisons, a 6-foot, 245-pound monster named Andrew Balcer—who murdered his parents and family dog in cold blood—decided he’s a woman and got moved to a female facility. Maine also bestows legal immunity on any adult who might drag a kid across state lines without the approval of the child’s parents, so long as the trip is for transgender treatments. We used to call that kidnapping; now we call it “transgender sanctuary.”
For six years, Mills and her cabal of far-left cronies have turned Maine into a dystopian playground for progressive extremism, not limited to transgender ideology. In the meanest of ways and with ruthless government coercion, they’ve punished dissenters and created a climate of fear among those in a position to speak out or blow the whistle on insanity and criminality. If you dare speak out, they’ll gag you, strip you of your rights, and shove you into the corner like a disobedient dog.
Laurel Libby is just the most recent victim. Before her, former Sunday River Brewing Company owner Rick Savage was stripped of his liquor license for criticizing Mills on Tucker Carlson’s TV show. He was forced to sell a profitable business and now he’s moved to New Hampshire, taking his entrepreneurial spirit, wealth, and payroll with him. Then we have Dr. Meryl Nass, a renowned expert on vaccines who was stripped of her medical license for criticizing Mills’ COVID-19 policies on the radio. Do you see the pattern here? Leftism, fueled by stubborn pride, has become not just Maine’s dominant political ideology, but the official state religion. You’re commanded to bow down, or you’ll lose your voice, your business, your right to speak at a school board meeting, your right to practice medicine or vote on behalf of your constituents. Step out of line, and they’ll harass you into submission. All non-believers face exile, ostracism, or ruin.
Is this what Maine’s supposed to be? The way life should be? A state hijacked by a radical minority of religious extremists who’ve weaponized government to force obedience to policies that defy science, logic, and basic human decency? Kids are getting harmed, women are getting cheated, and taxpayers are getting fleeced, all so a few ideologues can flex their power and dole out taxpayer money to their cronies. What this all leads to is anyone’s guess, but there’s no question that Maine is scraping rock bottom, culturally and politically. I’m not certain that mass resistance of middle-class, moderate, and center-right voters—i.e., the normies—is even possible in Maine. It could be that the greatest contribution Gov. Mills will deliver to Maine during her entire time in office will be focusing the attention of Trump’s Department of Justice on Maine. Perhaps what the state needs before any kind of comeback can begin is a thorough investigative probe and an equal, non-partisan administration of the law.
I’ll end with an anecdote.
I was recently talking with a video producer I’ve hired for a forthcoming Maine Wire project. He’s a young man, born and raised in Bangor, who’s stayed out of trouble, graduated from Husson with a degree, and is looking to build a life with his young fiancée.
“What’s keeping you guys in Maine?” I asked over lunch.
“We just haven’t been able to save enough money to get out,” he said.
That’s Janet Mills’ Maine in a nut shell, the Maine this thug progressivism has given us. A hopeless vortex of despair, poverty, and vanished opportunity that our young people can’t even afford to escape. But hey, at least we’ve still got pride.
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