AUGUSTA – A day after Maine voters decided to keep the state’s gay rights law on the books, the losing side said Wednesday its main focus now will be to pass a state constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage.
While conceding the referendum to those who sought to preserve gay rights protections in the Maine Human Rights Act, organizers of the repeal campaign said the fight is far from over.
“Though we are disappointed in the vote on Question One, we remain committed to marriage as the beautiful and loving union between a man and a woman,” said the Rev. Sandy Williams of the Coalition for Marriage, who challenged Gov. John Baldacci to introduce a constitutional amendment to that effect.
Williams said his group had no timetable for pressing ahead with its agenda.
Baldacci, who is up for re-election next year, is not interested in introducing an amendment because the state already has a law barring marriage between people of the same gender, said aide Lee Umphrey.
“Why would the governor want to amend the Maine Constitution to repeat what is already in our statutes?” said Umphrey.
Voters on Tuesday made Maine the last New England state to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. With returns from 95 percent of the state’s 634 precincts, votes supporting the gay rights law were ahead 55 percent to 45 percent over those seeking to overturn the law that was approved by the Legislature. The count was 219,404 to 179,175.
The vote “reaffirms the basic values that are intrinsic in Maine,” said Baldacci, who signed the law earlier this year before it was put on hold by the pending referendum. “Mainers don’t like discrimination … if it happens to one person it happens to all of us.”
Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called the outcome “a much-needed victory in our national movement” after a string of losses in other states on gay marriage issues. “We needed to show we can win.”
The issue, which was put to a statewide vote for the third time since 1998, pitted a coalition of mainstream religious and business groups and politicians against a network of Christian church groups that viewed gay rights as an assault on traditional marriage.
The Christian Civic League of Maine’s Michael Heath said the outcome was “not entirely unexpected,” saying the other side “had an unlimited number of times at bat.”
Gay rights bills have been introduced repeatedly in the Legislature since the late 1970s. Tuesday’s vote was a referendum on the law, enacted earlier this year, to amend the Maine Human Rights Act by making discrimination illegal in employment, housing, credit, public accommodations and education based on sexual orientation.
The Maine law already prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, disability, religion, ancestry and national origin. The gay rights provision was broadly worded to protect transsexuals, transvestites and those who have undergone sexual reassignment surgery, in addition to homosexuals.
The law exempts religious organizations that do not receive public funds. It also is worded to say it is not meant to address a right to marry.
A similar gay rights law, which was passed by the Legislature with a referendum provision, was rejected by voters in 2000. Two years earlier, an earlier version of the law was rejected at the polls in a special election that was called under Maine’s people’s veto process.
The difference this time was a change in attitudes, “a strong and consistent message” and involvement of young people in the campaign, said Ted O’Meara of Maine Won’t Discriminate.
“Sometimes these struggles take time,” said O’Meara.
Leading up to this fall’s vote, both sides reached out to their well-established bases to reinforce their messages, while keeping advertising for the electorate at large low-key.
Maine Won’t Discriminate, representing the coalition calling for protections, cited cases in which workers were fired, barred from overnight accommodations and harassed in school because there was no law to protect them.
The Christian Civic League of Maine and Maine Grassroots Coalition, drawing on support from evangelical churches across the state, saw the gay rights law as a step toward legalized gay marriage.
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