Civil rights march

The Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine takes the opportunity of the Maine Civil Rights March and Rally of Oct. 10 to affirm the center’s primary mission of supporting and linking individuals and groups concerned with peace, social justice, and environmental issues of working toward a peaceful and just society.

As expressed in the center’s Statement of Purpose, the following goals are directly relevant to the Maine Civil Rights March and Rally: developing nonviolent approaches to conflict — personally, locally, regionally, and globally; creating human relations not based on racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, able-bodism, and other structures of oppression; and working for the self-determination of all peoples and equitable relations between societies.

The repeal of the Civil Rights law last Feb. 10 was a clear violation of the goals of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine. Homosexuals — along with single parents, those with disabilites, the poor, welfare recipients, African Americans and other people of color, immigrants, ethnic groups, Jews, labor unions, and others — are often victims of scapegoating. Such scapegoating divides us from each other.

Instead of dealing with the real causes of poverty, alienation, powerlessness, and injustice, we scapegoat and direct our anger and frustration toward those who are themselves victims of hatred, intolerance and oppression. Homosexuals live their lives under daily threats of violence and oppression. Ten of thousands of homosexuals in Maine know that if others learn of their true sexual identity, they can be assaulted phyically or verbally and they can lose their jobs, housing, and basic civil and human rights that most citizens take for granted.

Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and many others have emphasized that there is no peace without justice. What we often find in Maine is a false sense of peace and a status quo that perpetuates injustice. Homosexuals and others live in fear, hide who they really are, and are denied the capacity for self-determination and for relating equitably and authentically with other human beings. History shows us that when we passively accept an oppressive, violent and unjust status quo and do not act to change it, we become part of the problem and are morally responsible for inflicting unnecessary suffering on our brothers and sisters who are perceived as different.

The Peace and Justice Center not only opposes scapegoating, violence and oppression, we uphold the values of tolerance. Even more than mere tolerance, we call for the celebration of diversity that is essential to Maine and the United States when we act at our best.

The Civil Rights Act extended the rights and protections of the law to all of us with regard to our sexuality. Without that provision in the law, we are all vunerable, homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, to unjust exclusion from opportunities for housing, employment and other social benefits. We call upon Mainers who believe in peace with justice to support the Maine Civil Rights March and Rally on October 10, to work to enact the repealed Civil Rights Law, and to dedicate ourselves to work for a future in which basic civil and human rights are guaranteed for all of us.

Doug Allen is the Education Committee coordinator of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.