Representative Lawrence Lockman of Amherst is in his first term in office, but he has quickly established himself as a vocal leader of the GOP’s tea party wing. He led the group of 26 Representatives who recently launched a ridiculous attack on House Speaker Mark Eves, he was one of only 21 Representatives who stood with Governor Paul LePage and voted against the attempt to restore revenue sharing to Maine towns and he introduced and fought for two new anti-union “right to work” bills this session despite the fact that similar legislation couldn’t pass even when Republicans held majorities in both chambers.

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“In the overwhelming majority of cases, people are dying because of their addiction to sodomy,” Lockman wrote in a 1987 letter to the editor to the Lewiston Daily Sun arguing against funding for AIDS education. “They are dying because progressive, enlightened, tolerant people in politics and in medicine have assured the public that the practice of sodomy is a legitimate alternative lifestyle, rather than a perverted, depraved crime against humanity.”

It was during this period that Lockman first ran for the Legislature, challenging a young state representative named Mike Michaud (now, of course, a U.S. Congressman running to unseat LePage as governor) for the District 134 seat in both 1986 and 1988. Lockman pledged to make health policy on AIDS and “the pervasive influence of militant, politically-organized homosexuals” major campaign issues. He would also call for an end to Maine’s income tax, deeming it “repugnant to American values.”

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In the early 1990s, Lockman was active on the issue of abortion. He became a director of the Pro Life Education Association and in 1990 was quoted as saying “If a woman has (the right to abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”

Also in 1990, he attempted to break the union at the Passadumkeag Stud Mill where he worked, a move that was voted down 81 to 18.

That same year he claimed that a CBS special about a gay teenage boy was “blatant homosexual propaganda” and “a recruitment tool for the militant homosexual movement”

“Clearly the practice of sodomy is learned behavior, and those addicted to this form of biologically-insane sex are at high risk for all manner of serious medical problems,” wrote Lockman in a letter to the Bangor Daily News about the program.

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In the late 90s and early 2000s, Lockman spoke out against anti-bullying and diversity initiatives in Maine schools, calling them “politically-correct liberal fascism,” and warning that “The thought police have arrived. Their mission is to serve as the eyes and ears of Big Sister.”

The “homosexual rights movement” is engaged in “a covert scheme to use federal crime-control funds to transform Maine’s public schools into gay-activist indoctrination centers,” claimed Lockman.