My family was driven out of Vienna by the Nazis. My relatives were killed in gas chambers. What began as discrimination grew into persecution and ended as mass murder.

The Nazis also persecuted homosexuals. Making the argument that homosexuality was a disease that could be cured, they arrested thousands of gay men, put them in concentration camps, and tried to “re-educate” them by forcing them to have sex with female inmates. But because discrimination is always based on hate, homosexuals were beaten, shot, drowned, starved and worked to death by camp guards, men who had learned to hate homosexuals.

The Nazis are gone, but discrimination against homosexuals continues. The Maine Legislature has courageously gone on record as opposing such discrimination. Now we the people have a chance to demonstrate our belief that discrimination is not compatible with democracy by defeating the attempt to repeal this new law.

Those who wish to deny equal rights to gays have used three strategies here in Maine and across the country. First, they have tried to confuse the issue by making false claims about what ending discrimination means. For many years, they claimed that anti-discrimination laws gave homosexuals “special rights.” This was an effective tactic. When I walked around my neighborhood in 2000 talking to people about the attempt to repeal an earlier anti-discrimination bill, I heard the phrase “special rights” many times.

There are no “special rights.” The anti-discrimination law gives to homosexuals the same rights as other laws against discrimination have given to blacks, women, Jews and other groups who have suffered from prejudice. The text of the law says only that it is “to prevent discrimination in employment, housing or access to public accommodations … in the extension of credit … and in education on account of … sexual orientation.” Such laws have been very important in my lifetime in ending discrimination against Jews, which was common here in Maine and everywhere in the U.S. when I was young. I have no special rights. I just have the right to be an American. Gay people should also have that right.

Now the repeal lobby has brought up a second tactic of confusion. They say that it’s not this law that’s so bad, but that it will lead to gay marriage. Like the claim about “special rights,” this is just not true. There is nothing in this bill about gay marriage.

Certainly some people are in favor of gay marriage, while others are opposed. If that issue ever comes up as a legislative proposal, it should be discussed. Discriminating against homosexuals does not become acceptable because one is opposed to gay marriage.

Finally, the repeal lobby relies on its most powerful argument: the Bible. Repealers constantly quote those passages in the Bible that say that homosexual sex is evil. These passages are pretty clear. So are some other passages from the King James Bible, which used to be quoted quite often. For example, in The Gospel According to St. John, Chapter 8:44-47, Jesus says to the Jews, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. … He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” In The Revelation of St. John the Divine, 2:9, Jesus told John to write, “I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”

These passages were used for centuries to justify Christian discrimination against Jews.

Right into the 20th century, Christian leaders quoted these biblical passages as proof that it was right for Christians to discriminate against Jews, to hate Jews. Then came the Holocaust, in which Christians all over Europe participated in murdering Jews. Now every Christian faith has rejected the intent of these words in the Bible.

Lutherans disavow the words of Luther when he advised his followers to raze Jews’ houses and burn their synagogues. Catholics disavow the words of Pope Paul IV, who ordained the creation of ghettos for Jews in 1555.

Lutherans and Catholics and Baptists and Presbyterians can be good Christians while ignoring the meaning of some Biblical passages.

Discrimination is wrong. The United States of America was founded by people who believed it was self-evident that “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Our founders still discriminated against women and blacks, but their ideology of equality and democracy led later to laws that prohibited such discrimination as against our founding principles. The new law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is one more link in this proud chain.

I know how hurtful discrimination is, and not just to the victims. We can see in Maine how inhumane the repealers have made themselves by their arguments. I value the rights that came at such a high cost to me and my family. I will vote no on Question 1.

Steve Hochstadt teaches history at Bates College. He can be reached by e-mail at: shochsta@bates.edu.

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