A State House rally is scheduled today to protect marriage from the purported radical homosexual agenda.

Too bad for event planners, but marriage isn’t under assault.

The rally is meant to build opposition to recently passed legislation that protects gays, lesbians and transgender individuals from discrimination. The law, which clearly says it’s not meant as a precursor to gay marriage, says that a person can’t be fired from his or her job, denied housing or educational opportunities, or otherwise denied the equal protection of the law based on sexuality.

That’s not what you’ll hear today.

As supporters of a “people’s veto” of the legislation work to gather signatures to put a question on the ballot to reject the law, the rhetoric will be charged and nasty. They need 59,519 certified signatures by June 28 to get the referendum on the November ballot, and they’ll say whatever they need to to make it happen. They will use fear, exaggeration and intolerance, if necessary.

Already, the misinformation is running unchecked from the Christian Civic League of Maine, the Maine Grassroots Coalition and a group calling itself the “Coalition for Marriage.”

Anti-gay activists Paul Madore of Lewiston and Michael Heath of the Christian Civic League are leading the charge against equal rights. They have taken their show on the road, visiting churches and communities with a message that homosexuals do not deserve “special rights.”

A question-and-answer sheet on the Coalition for Marriage’s Web site (www.coalitionformarriage.net), claims that the law prohibits anyone from speaking out against behavior they believe is immoral. The law does no such thing. As the coalition shows, people can say just about anything they like without much regard for the facts.

The sheet also says the law creates special rights that will allow gays and lesbians to gain unfair advantage over other people. That can only be true if it’s also true that the Maine Human Rights Act creates special rights for the disabled, for women, for ethnic minorities and for older workers – they already have protection under the law from discrimination.

As hard as it is to believe, until this law was passed, it was perfectly legal to fire someone for being gay or to kick a woman out of an apartment for being a lesbian. Maine is the last state in New England to address this deficiency.

The anti-discrimination law is not some effort to “subvert society,” and it’s not part of an “ideology of evil,” as its detractors say. It is not part of some mythical, radical agenda with a goal of “the destruction of the traditional family and the overthrow of the existing social order,” as Heath has written.

It’s about equality and justice.