The 300 supporters of gay rights would not have needed to march 10 miles in the rain last weekend if as much grassroots energy had been used to defeat the anti-gay referendum question last February as was expended in support of those rights Saturday. But while energy on the streets cannot overcome complacency in the voting booth, the march was an important, positive event for equal rights in Maine and beyond.

The approximately 500 people who attended the rally in Bangor after the march heard Attorney General Andrew Ketterer present a clear, honest argument for protecting gays under the state’s Human Rights Act. “These are not special rights,” he said. “This is a group of people who need special remedies to achieve the same rights” that other Maine residents enjoy. A remedy for a lack of rights. The tests for whether gays deserve these remedies are simple: Are they, as a group, harassed? Are they threatened with loss of employment or housing because of their sexual orientation? Do assumptions and, occasionally, violent reactions to this lawful behavior ever place them in jeopardy?

As with people who join a religion only to find that mere affiliation with this group can threaten their livelihoods, if not their lives, gay people are confronted with animosity and hostility not because of who they are individually but because of how a portion of the public feels about the group with which they are identified. This qualifies them for a remedy to a lack of rights heterosexuals enjoy automatically.

There is some level of resentment against gays because their sexuality has become a regular issue in Maine for more than 15 years. People who don’t spend a lot of time thinking about their own sexuality understandably don’t wan’t to spend time thinking about someone else’s. The march and rally Saturday — of young and old, male and female, gay and straight — placed the emphasis where it belonged, on the question of civil rights.

Agreeing with this cause is not about validating a lifestyle; it is not about forcing everyone to like each other. It is about demanding, if not respect, at least basic human decency. It is about telling the thugs among us that this state is big enough and big-hearted enough to have ample room for all its law-abiding residents. It is about letting people alone; of not harassing them or threatening them or worse because of their sexuality.

Now, opponents of these rights will argue that the protections are not needed because homosexuals are not harrassed or beaten very often in Maine. The argument misses the point in any number of ways. But to take just one, consider that no one questions whether race should be included in the Human Rights Act even though Maine has low numbers of racial minorities. The same is true for instances of religious discrimination.

It needs hardly be encouraged for some legislator to submit a gay-rights bill next session. It will happen, and the debate that has raged for years in Maine will reverberate in the State House once again. If the weekend’s marchers can carry their enthusiasm into the winter, the results next time should be more permanent that this year’s version.