WASHINGTON — Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) announced he’s gay in an Op-Ed article published by Maine newspapers Monday, making him the seventh openly gay member of Congress.
The five-term representative, currently running for governor, said that he was prompted to speak out by “whisper campaigns” alleging that he was gay.
“Allow me to save them the trouble with a simple, honest answer. ‘Yes I am. But why should it matter?’” Michaud wrote. “That may seem like a big announcement to some people. For me, it’s just a part of who I am, as much as being a third-generation millworker or a lifelong Mainer.”
Citing his Franco American Catholic upbringing as one of the reasons for his silence on his sexuality, Michaud said he hopes to inspire others to be open about themselves.
I am so bored with faux-gay bravery and victimization.
November 5, 2013 at 11:31 pm
Yeah, you don't care that anyone opposes gay marriage. Your comment on the Orson Scott Card entry on this very blog would suggest otherwise—why else would you say it's surprising he opposes it, "considering Ender's Game's ending in which sympathy and understanding prevail"? I'm sorry; I am acquainted with elementary logic. If opposition to gay marriage surprises you in one who espouses "sympathy and understanding", then you are accusing the opponents of gay marriage of being unsympathetic and lacking in understanding. That is, you make an ad hominem attack, and characterize other people's positions as arising from a moral failing. And then you dare accuse me of any wrongdoing? There are limits to hypocrisy.
Yeah, you never posture as a tragic victim of other people's "persecution". There is no self-righteous posturing in your comments at all; your AA-quality sob-story about your "coming out" certainly isn't dripping with self-pity and implied accusations about how Catholics "are not very accepting of LGBT people". Do even you believe your lies?
And yes, I do comment on NCR as Tom in AZ. I'm sorry you don't like anal "intercourse" described as what it is; that doesn't constitute "bullying" or "persecution". Maybe if you're offended by perfectly accurate descriptions of the thing you define your identity by, the problem is with your identity.
November 5, 2013 at 11:44 pm
You cannot dispute even one of my facts about history or biology; you probably didn't even read those parts. You came in here as, essentially, a concern troll, to whine that the blog's entirely correct denunciation of a PR stunt by a political opportunist is mean, and then you complain when I respond as your trolling warrants.
November 5, 2013 at 11:51 pm
No apology for the misunderstanding of the name dispute? Ok. Seems like you justify yourself completely without ramifications.
I don't care what people oppose gay marriage in regards to this post. I respect other people's beliefs, as you should too. I commented on that post because the end result of the book was that Ender comes to a reconciliation with the buggers who are demonized by humans. It is odd to me that Card doesn't necessarily express that with his views, but that's just my opinion. It has nothing to do with this discussion. Nor am I saying that opposition to gay marriage is lacking in sympathy and understanding. Although I do believe that many people who solely focus on the marriage issue tend to forget about care for LGBT people.
Who are you to talk like that. I never made a sob story. I said it was difficult for me to come out. I never went into private details which were in reality very serious. I have friends who attempted suicide because their parents threatened to disown them. It is a serious matter and you joking about it is very disturbing. Your comments do seem to reflect my statement, unless you are not Catholic.
I also never said that your statements constitute bullying or persecution. I never implied it either. I just think that your words are rather harsh and not respectful. Why not just say "anal sex or gay sex". It's not necessary to elaborate on that. Once again you are wrong, because I have clearly stated against that fact. Me being gay is not an identity. It is a part of who I am, just as being an avid sci-fi fan, anime fan, kayaker, hiker, martial artist are all parts of who I am. You are clearly misconstruing what I said about that. Many people do that, and its ridiculously rude. Does your religious belief and heterosexuality completely define who you are?
November 5, 2013 at 11:54 pm
I am not trolling at all. The remark on this article seemed very harsh so I brought it up. Your remarks against my supposed trolling were not relevant at all. Neither were your "facts" about history and biology. It is clear that you just want to prove your point about why homosexuality is deviant, not have a respectful discussion about the article.
November 6, 2013 at 12:10 am
An objectively disordered inclination or desire cannot be intrinsic to a person.
November 6, 2013 at 12:20 am
There was no misunderstanding in the name dispute. You couldn't be bothered to get my name right, and then you made excuses that were obvious lies, since "copy-paste" is the easiest possible thing in the history of computers. Instead of lying to my face, why didn't you just apologize?
And so you don't care about gay marriage "in regards to this post". Your comments on the Card post don't exist. Okay, then my comments on NCR don't exist either.
If your complaints about me, immediately prefacing remarks about "bullying and persecution", were not intended to imply that I was guilty of bullying and persecution, then "context" has no linguistic relevance whatsoever. It is a common tactic of the completely disingenuous to pretend that the close juxtaposition of two statements, which can only imply equivalence, does no such thing, if equivalence is not explicitly stated. Are you going to debate the linguistic concept of "context" with me? The structure of your remarks, though stated in a subject-prominent language, approximated the format of topic-prominence observable in Japanese or Korean. You might as well have said, "As for the topic 'bullying and persecution', (complaints about Sophia's Favorite's remarks)."
As for whether my religious belief and heterosexuality define who I am: of course they do. Put logically, "Does your stance toward existence itself, and your place within a Darwinian reproductive paradigm, have any relevance to your identity as a sapient life-form?" Uh…the question is actually, "Does anything else define you?" Kayaker, sci-fi fan, anime fan, martial artist, hiker—those are things you do. They are not who you are. Who you are, as a sapient being, an image of God, a possessor of the Buddha-nature, a Being-in-the-world-and-toward-death (all the same thing really), is solely and exclusively what your posture toward existence is. At a much less fundamental level, how you interact with the polarity of male and female defines you, in part as an organism with a sexual reproductive framework (and a social system built, at least since the Upper Paleolithic, on the male-female pair-bond), but also as a part of the structure of reality itself. Though existence is the Great Unity, the Monad, the One, sex (which is just our simplistic name for a symmetry found also in the entire world, from the elementary particles up to the structure of space-time itself—"Yin and Yang" is one name for it, "Shiva-Shakti" another) is the Great Duality, and comes at number two just as its nature consists of two things.
You appear to suffer in all aspects of your life from atomistic thinking. Just as you appear to think that each of your remarks can be taken in absolute isolation and should only be judged by what it explicitly states (but you do not apply that criterion to others' remarks), you seem to be attempting to construct an identity out of scraps and parts. You cannot. You are not a monster sewn together out of pieces of corpses; you are a totality, a whole, a single living organism.
November 6, 2013 at 12:49 am
It may interest you to note, the Sacrament of Matrimony is not the wedding ceremony.
It's sex.
Every sacrament has a physical component. The bread and wine which become the flesh and blood of Christ; the oil of anointing; the water of baptism. It makes sense that the bodily component of confession is physical presence in the same room with the priest, since "telling things verbally" is the physical act of confessing. But…what is the physical act of coupling? It's not a priest saying words or even vows being exchanged.
Ask yourself: why isn't your sexuality important to your identity? Why do you hate sex so much? Your pal Pat was deeply, deeply offended when I implied that marriage is primarily a sexual relationship; he was incapable of describing sexual intercourse without recourse to obscenity, so disgusting does he find the act of a man and woman coupling. And then he says I "hurl filth".
November 6, 2013 at 12:53 am
I did apologize . "When did I attack you or your name? I apologize as I was trying to quickly respond." Please don't lie.
If I am not a "monster sewn together" then what am I? The only way to define something is to compare it to everything else around it. Otherwise, how would anyone know what anything is. It must be related to something else.
Regardless it still seems like you don't want to have a conversation. You just want to prove me wrong. Fine. Do what you will I'm done. I know where I stand and I know where you stand. That alone is enough. I do not wish to continue speaking to you because you are not respectfully committing to a discussion. The fact that you keep insulting my intelligence and my life is proof. You want to prove yourself. That's fine. Go do that. You are only proving that you are still deluded. I am not losing sleep over any of this. Hope you have a goodnight.
November 6, 2013 at 4:18 am
Sophie your last paragraph is the opposite of what I have said about the beautiful and magical act of sexual intercourse. You are delusional and dangerous.
Soph, I pray nightly for your death. And I think it's only fair to warn you that I have achieved success on two prior occasions.