Maine GayNet - Diocese's neutrality may tip vote against gays
Sunday, January 4, 1998

Diocese's neutrality may tip vote against gays

Groups organizing to get out the vote
The Ballot Question
The Statute Wording
Shelved Amendments

By Steven G. Vegh
Staff Writer
©Copyright 1998 Guy Gannett Communications
Last spring, Maine's Catholic diocese tried to attach seven conditions to the gay-rights bill going before the Legislature. Legislators rejected all seven ideas, and approved the bill by large margins.

Supporters of the bill soon may regret that they brushed the diocese aside.

Voters will decide in a Feb. 10 referendum whether to repeal the gay-rights law, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has refused to ask church members to back the law and reject repeal. Instead, the diocese is officially neutral in the debate over repeal.

Had legislators adapted the gay-rights bill to meet church concerns, however, the diocese would now be among the groups opposing the referendum, said Marc Mutty, a diocesan spokesman.

The lack of diocesan support may make the difference in whether a law that extends civil rights protections to homosexuals is repealed in February.

At least a quarter-million Mainers are Catholic. Many of those people, when in doubt on a public issue, ask what the church's position is.

''The Catholic church, on the ground in Maine, does have political clout,'' said Christian Potholm, a Bowdoin College government professor. ''It makes a big difference that they're not on the 'No' side. That's a major defection.''

The church's stance is a defection in the context of 1995, when the diocese joined groups calling for a ''No'' vote in an anti-gay-rights referendum.

Potholm studies campaigns and state elections in Maine. His findings in 1995 showed that outspoken opposition by the diocese in the last two weeks before the election persuaded many Catholics to vote against that referendum. The anti-gay measure was defeated.

Maine's new gay-rights law forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in credit, employment, housing and public accommodations. Enforcement of the law has been suspended during the referendum process.

The Christian Coalition of Maine and the Christian Civic League of Maine initiated the referendum drive, also known as a people's veto, aimed at overturning the law. The two groups last summer gathered more than the 51,131 signatures required to get their repeal question on the state ballot.

League: No compromise

Michael Heath, executive director of the civic league, said his organization did not support the diocesan amendments to the gay-rights bill. In fact, league officials did not even discuss the amendments.

The Christian Civic League did not want to compromise.

''I was focused on defeating the bill, not trying to amend it,'' Heath said.

However, Heath acknowledged that things may have turned out differently had the Catholic diocese's amendments been included.

He said he wasn't sure whether his board of directors would have gone ahead with the ''people's veto'' to repeal the gay-rights law, had the Legislature included the measures proposed by the diocese.

That's because overturning the law would have been tougher if the diocese was allied with gay-rights supporters in fighting any referendum.

In New Hampshire last year, the Catholic diocese was able to work language into a gay-rights bill before the Legislature. That bill was signed into law and - unlike Maine's experience - took effect last week.

Attempts to pass a gay-rights bill in New Hampshire's legislature had failed in past years because of opposition from the governor and from the state's Catholic diocese.

But last year, state Rep. Bill McCann, R-Dover, made sure he collaborated with New Hampshire's Catholic diocese in writing the gay- rights bill.

McCann took care of diocese concerns by including in the legislation a diocese-written statement that says: ''New Hampshire does not intend to promote or endorse any sexual life- style other than the traditional marriage-based family.''

McCann said the diocese then endorsed the bill, which made getting the full Legislature's approval much easier. The bill was signed into law by the new governor, Jeanne Shaheen.

Amendments proposed

In Maine, the Catholic diocese had seven amendments - not just one - that it wanted attached to the proposed gay rights law. Those amendments called for:

Mutty, the Maine Catholic diocesan spokesman, said the church opposes discrimination against homosexuals and viewed the 1995 referendum as discriminatory.

But, he said, the diocese feared that the gay-rights bill passed last year went beyond prohibiting discrimination. The bill was vague enough so that it could be read as promoting homosexual behavior, which the church opposes.

The seven diocesan amendments would have satisfied the church and earned the church's endorsement of the bill. But Mutty said legislative supporters of gay rights ignored the amendments because they were confident they already had enough votes to pass the bill.

Legislators' thinking, Mutty believes, was this: ''Why compromise to get the Catholic church on board when you don't need to?''

Were proposals late?

Karen Geraghty, a lobbyist for the Maine Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, agreed that a winning margin of support for the bill had already been lined up by the time the diocese raised its concerns.

But Geraghty said the church introduced its amendments too late in the legislative session to be considered, especially because they came after the gay-rights bill already had adequate support.

Mutty said the church's amendments were not late. They were presented at a public hearing and followed the normal legislative process.

The chief sponsor of the gay-rights bill, Sen. Joel Abromson, R-Portland, said he did not consider whether or not the amendments were timely.

Rather, Abromson said he simply didn't consider them to be appropriate.

''I had problems with each one,'' he said. Moreover, the very notion of adding special conditions and exemptions was inconsistent with a bill aimed at giving homosexuals broad, equal rights under the law, Abromson said.

Abromson said he would have done nothing differently even if it was clear last spring that the gay-rights law would be challenged in a referendum - and support from the Catholic diocese could become important.

Mutty, of the diocese, thinks other legislators, however, might have sought the diocese's support, had they believed a people's veto drive was likely.

''I think things would have been a lot different because, as everybody knows now, having the Catholic church on your side would be very important,'' Mutty said.


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Groups organizing to get out the vote

  • A short campaign will limit the money raised by organizations on both sides of the issue.
    • By Steven G. Vegh
    Staff Writer
    ©Copyright 1997 Guy Gannett Communications
    The referendum on whether to repeal Maine's new gay-rights law is less than six weeks away, but the campaigns to overturn or preserve the law remain low-key.

    Spokesmen for both sides say their organizations have been focusing on recruiting volunteers whose jobs will be to get supporters to the polls on Feb. 10.

    Maine's new gay-rights law forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in credit, employment, housing and public accommodations. Enforcement of the law has been suspended during the referendum process.

    The Christian Coalition of Maine and the Christian Civic League of Maine initiated the referendum, also known as a ''people's veto,'' to repeal the law. The two groups led a petition drive last summer that gathered more than the 51,131 signatures required to get their question on the state ballot.

    The Christian groups also created a coalition, known as ''Yes for Equal Rights,'' to campaign for the repeal of the gay-rights law.

    The campaign has a narrow focus: Getting people already identified as opposing the gay-rights law out to the polls.

    Paul Volle of the Christian Coalition said the group will largely use church contacts to rouse voters.

    ''We're very selective on who we're going to contact,'' he said. ''It'll be done through our Christian community network and field volunteers.''

    The campaign will not try to win over to its side members of the general public who are undecided about the referendum.

    Maine Won't Discriminate, the coalition opposing the referendum and supporting the gay-rights law, has concentrated on organizing volunteers and putting together its statewide campaign.

    Like the pro-referendum side, Maine Won't Discriminate has a big roster of volunteers from 1995, when Mainers voted down an anti-gay- rights referendum.

    Both sides also are raising money, and both say the short length of the campaign will limit how much they raise. Exactly how much the campaigns have raised and spent won't be known until Jan. 15, when campaign finance reports must be filed with the state.

    Joe Cooper, a spokesman for Maine Won't Discriminate, which supports the gay-rights law, said all forms of advertising are being considered by his campaign, including television.

    Not so with Yes for Equal Rights, which opposes the law. Television, Volle said, is unlikely.

    ''It wouldn't surprise me if we didn't run one ad,'' Volle said.

    Volle said television advertising in particular soon escalates into ''air wars'' in which each side tries to refute the other's ads.

    Such ads are futile, he said.

    ''TV advertising doesn't persuade the voters. How many more things can you say about it (gay rights), and what can you say on TV that you haven't already said to people?'' he asked.

    Volle's view contradicts Christian Potholm's emphasis on the value of television political advertising in Maine. Potholm is a professor of government at Bowdoin College, and a student of Maine political campaigns.

    Potholm sees television ads as the only way to reach a large number of voters, alert them to the upcoming election, and win them over to one side or another.


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    BALLOT QUESTION

    The ballot question in the Feb. 10 gay-rights referendum will ask voters:

    ''Do you want to reject the law passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation with respect to jobs, housing, public accommodations and credit?''


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    STATUTE WORDING

    When the gay-rights law was passed, wording of Maine's anti-discrimination law was changed to include ''sexual orientation'' - along with age, race, color, sex, religious background and ancestry - as a reason for which people cannot be discriminated against.

    The law goes on to define sexual orientation this way: ''Sexual orientation means having a preference for heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality, having a history of that preference or being identified with that preference.''

    The law is not being enforced, when it comes to sexual orientation, until results of the Feb. 10 election are known.


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    SHELVED AMENDMENTS

    Here are the seven amendments to Maine's proposed gay-rights law that were offered last year by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. Lawmakers did not include the amendments in the bill that passed.

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