Over the last few months, the Maine legislature has introduced several bills that have a seemingly progressive agenda. A bill banning conversion therapy, another requiring schools to create suicide prevention policies by next fall, and two separate bills banning female genital mutilation, one sponsored by Democrats and the other by Republicans, have all gained public attention as they wind through the legislative process. On the surface, these bills represent a growing endorsement of liberal ideology. 

But there are deeper issues to be explored by these laws that serve as regulatory actions — they don’t address the root cause of these complex issues. In part, this is because none of these laws provide funding for deeper work.