PORTLAND, Maine — Maine Democrats are celebrating Pride month while also touting the progress Governor Janet Mills has made for the LGBTQ+ community.
A number of speakers shared their stories about coming out, while also speaking about the importance of Speaker Ryan Fecteau's bill to ban conversion therapy.
A bill that Former Governor Paul LePage vetoed four years ago.
"I poured my heart into that, bared my scars to strangers and then LePage looked at the evidence and said 'I don't care,'" Victor Trepanier said on the conversion bill veto. "Something so cut-and-dry and somehow it was bad policy. Protecting people, protecting children is not bad policy."
When LePage vetoed that bill he said in part, "This bill attempts to regulate professionals who already have a defined scope of practice and standard of care per their statutory licensing requirements."
Maine GOP Executive Director Jason Savage said in a statement to NEWS CENTER Maine on Monday, "Right now, all Mainers are worried about their economic circumstances during the mess Biden and Mills have made. In this case, Democrats certainly have a right to their own opinion, but not their own facts: a number of Democrats voted with Gov. LePage on this bill and we suspect plenty of Maine Democrats agree that Janet Mills has been an abject failure as Maine's governor."