Oct 14, 2005  |  By: ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG  | COMMENTS     

Maine voters will decide next month whether the state should bar discrimination in employment, housing and other areas based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In 1998 and 2000, efforts to enact similar legislation were defeated by voter referendum. This year, the state legislature passed — and the governor signed — another bill to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, education, public accommodations and credit. On Nov. 8, voters are scheduled to decide if they want to reject that law or allow it to stand.

Jesse Connolly, campaign manager for Maine Won’t Discriminate said that this time around the law’s supporters have several advantages, including bipartisan support and a “mainstream” campaign. And, the Associated Press reported that Maine Won’t Discriminate raised at least five times as much as its opponents, the Maine Grassroots Coalition and the Coalition for Marriage.

“If you talk to the average Mainer on the street, they can’t believe Maine doesn’t already provide this protection,” Connolly said.

Among the law’s vocal supporters are the Maine Chamber of Commerce and the former state party chair for the Republican Party, Ted O’Meara.

“We feel these are just very basic protections,” O’Meara told the Blade. “Discrimination is real. People lose their jobs, get denied housing because of sexual orientation.”

But opponents of the law say it is not about discrimination. This law will lay the groundwork for a claim to equal marriage rights by gay men and lesbians, according to the law’s opponents.

Supporters of the measure point out that the law includes language addressing such concerns: “This Act may not be construed to create, add, alter or abolish any right to marry that may exist under the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of Maine or the laws of this State.”

Despite the law’s language, opponents claim that an anti-discrimination law will inevitably lead to same-sex marriage — and utter chaos. According to an “action alert” posted to the Christian Civic League’s Web site prior to the law’s passage: “Passage of this bill will allow your child’s male health teacher to show up in class one day in a dress, lipstick, and high heels due to a change in ‘perceived gender identity’; or men to follow your wife or daughter into the ladies room at a public place, because they feel the need to ‘express’ their ‘perceived gender identity’ as female.”

The Christian Civic League and the Maine Grassroots Coalition were not available for comment.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, Washington, D.C. and six states, including Rhode Island, have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Forty-six members of Maine’s legal community have analyzed the law and found that, “the addition of sexual orientation to the state’s non-discrimination law provides no legal basis for same-sex marriage.”

Those who studied the law, including law professors and attorneys, concluded that the explicit language barring the law from being used to support an equal marriage claim means that there is no way it can mean marriage rights for gay men and lesbians.