Brian Hale is a pastor and also the Republican candidate for House District 85 in Maine and has recently begun receiving some help from the National Organization for Marriage ... unwanted help, as it turns out, because Hale does not appreciate being associated with the anti-gay mailers that NOM is sending out:
The two-sided flier features a smiling family of four with a "Welcome to Maine, the way life should be" placard and a single photograph of Hale. Hale said the family in the picture is not even his family.
On the flip side of the flier is a photograph of [incumbent Rep. Jeffre] McCabe, with his e-mail address and two men in bow ties, arm-in-arm, appearing atop a wedding cake.
"Now it's time to let Jeff McCabe know we don't agree with his decision to back same-sex marriage," the flier reads.
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Hale says he supports traditional marriage, meaning a union between a man and a woman, but said his campaign did not send the fliers.
"I think this is tasteless; I'm not enjoying this," Hale said Monday. "I think this is an incidence of friendly fire -- someone thought they were helping me and they're not. I'm running as a fiscal conservative -- that's what I'm going around talking to people about. I'm not running an anti-gay campaign. The first time that I heard anything about this or its contents is when I pulled it out of my mailbox."
Hale said he showed the flier to his wife and daughters and they agreed that it was inappropriate. His 16-year-old daughter Hanna called it "really creepy," he said.
"People are thinking I am the one who put this out," Hale said. "I can see how one might understand that -- it has my photo on it and my e-mail address, both of which I believe were pulled off the Internet. People are seeing this and saying, 'Pastor Hale is a homophobe' -- and I'm not."
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Hale said his campaign literature has the state-mandated "paid for and authorized by the committee to elect Brian Hale," while the fliers do not. The return address on the fliers is for the National Organization for Marriage, based in Washington D.C., a group that opposes same-sex marriage.
