The ballot is short Tuesday. One question: Do Maine people reject or keep a law that prevents discrimination against gays in the areas of housing, jobs and credit? Simple. Decide whether homosexuals deserve the same freedoms heterosexuals have in the Maine community.

The debate has sent both sides to their Bibles. Scripture has not been quoted this freely since the heyday of camp meetings. But the Bible, for all its power and authority, does not decide the state’s laws. People do; people who must decide whether they have room in their state — if not in their hearts — for gay folks.

Arguments against the law take many forms, shifting as myths are rebutted. The latest is the charge that sexual orientation does not deserve inclusion in the Human Rights Act because gays don’t share obvious and unchangeable characteristics, such as race or ancestry. What they don’t say is that religion is already protected under the same act. Have trouble telling a Catholic from a Protestant? Ever hear of a person choosing another religion? Of course. Ironically, the leaders of the effort to defeat the gay-rights law — the so-called special rights — are already protected by that law. They’re safe, they say, so let’s forget about everybody else.

Maine does not do that. Neighbors help neighbors in time of need, and there is need this time. The Attorney General’s Office presents information regularly about the discrimination faced by gay people in Maine, but opponents of the law don’t want to hear it. They pretend that it does not exist.

The Christian Civic League, in its eagerness to condemn homosexuality, has confused a behavior it does not like with the people who would be protected under the act. The league can stand against homosexuality. It can proclaim gays and lesbians morally misguided. But when it protests a law designed to protect a minority group that has suffered a history of violence it fail to understand the purpose of government. Nowhere else is the state asked to consciously discriminate against law-abiding citizens because a religious group does not like their behavior.

Maine has been debating this law for two decades. Early on, the Legislature killed the gay-rights bill. Then one house would pass it and the other would kill it. Then the governor at the time didn’t like it. In ’95, voters defeated a referendum question that would have prevented the bill from being considered again. Last year, a gay-rights bill got bipartisan support in the Legislature and the support of the governor. Voters will at last answer the question Feb. 10.

Frustratingly, proponents of the law are concerned that their supporters will not bother to vote. The people who have fought for so long are concerned that these supporters would allow 20 years of learning and understanding to be lost in a single vote, not because supporters were swayed by the weight of opponent’s arguments but because they were too busy. Or it was too cold out. Or the polling place wasn’t on their way home from work.

Please don’t let this happen. Don’t let this long and exhausting fight be decided by voter apathy.