Mark Henkel persisted that Portland Press Herald publish article - Feb 2009

Published: Sept. 9, 2020, noon

National Polygamy Advocate \u2122 Mark Henkel persistently sought for the Opinion Page Editor John Porter to publish an article in the Portland Press Herald, starting on February 11, 2009.  The Maine newspaper had, 2 years previously, reported about Mark Henkel.  Later that coming Spring of 2009, the Maine State Legislature was preparing to make a law to make Maine the 5th State to legalize same sex marriage.  Mark Henkel was seeking to show a "third way," the Polygamy Rights Win-Win Solution to end the marriage debate.  Mark Henkel had first spoken with the newspaper's "Maine Voices" Editor Michael (M.D.) Harmon who had passed it off with a recommendation that Mark Henkel instead pursue the matter with his next-up-the-line editor, John Porter.  John Porter sounded like he would consider a 700-word op-ed instead.   He said that he did not think that polygamy was somehow "relevant" or even "controversial" to be part of the debate (revealing how the Manufactured News Corporations do not really allow full debate or anyone to be heard on issues they control).  But John Porter did say that he would "shop it around" (even to his own boss) when Mark Henkel would later send the article to him. Mark Henkel called back a few times in April, 2009, even on the day before his live appearance at the Maine Public Hearing for the pending same sex marriage law on April 22,2009.  By April 28, 2009, it seemed possible that the newspaper would finally publish it. (On a side note, later that year, 2009, when the newspaper was bought, placing it under new ownership, John Porter would be removed from his top-dog newspaper editorship to instead go work as a spokesman for a local internet company.  In that following Fall of 2009, the opponents of the newly-passed same sex marriage law were gearing up for a statewide referendum to repeal it with a "People's Veto."  Mark Henkel would continue to reach out to the Portland Press Herald and its new top-dog editor to publish this timely relevant article.  The "People's Veto" subsequently passed, which in turn, repealed the then-new-but-thereafter-repealed same sex marriage law in Maine.  On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court Decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, determined that same sex marriage was thereafter to be legalized in all 50 States. ) In the end, the Portland Press Herald still chose to hide the article from their readership, which instead was later published in a different newspaper in Portland.

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