PORTLAND – The executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine has begun taking steps to prohibit all state and local governments from providing domestic partnership benefits.

Michael Heath filed a petition with the Secretary of State’s office on Tuesday to force an election on the issue.

If Heath’s petition is approved and he meets the requirements necessary to land the issue on the November 2002 ballot, voters will also decide whether or not to overturn a decision by the Portland City Council to establish a registry of same-sex and opposite-sex unmarried couples.

Heath’s referendum would also prohibit the state university system from providing benefits to the domestic partners of their employees, and would take away health insurance from the domestic partners of employees who already have them.

“We are praying and thinking about it and talking with folks who have concerns about this, about domestic partnership and the agenda of the gay movement here in Maine and throughout the country,” Heath said.

The Secretary of State’s office is reviewing the petition and is expected to respond by June 4.

Heath will then be able to collect signatures – he needs 42,101 – to place the question on the ballot.

The state has made significant strides in recognizing same-sex couples in recent months. Earlier this year, the State Employee Health Commission approved granting health insurance benefits to gay and unmarried heterosexual partners of state employees.

On Monday, the Portland City Council made history by unanimously supporting the creation of a registry, which will recognize domestic partners as families and afford them many of the same rights and privileges as husbands and wives.

The university system and the City of Portland have offered the benefits for some time, and the ordinance City Councilors in the city approved on Monday would require any recipient of city funds to offer the benefits to employees.

A bill is also in the state Legislature that would require health insurance companies to offer domestic partner benefits if they offer coverage to the spouses of plan-covered lawmakers. The measure was approved by the House of Representatives and is headed to the Senate for a final vote.

Karen Geraghty, a Portland city councilor who co-sponsored the city’s ordinance, said she and others knew that Heath had filed the petition, and are taking steps to keep a ballot question from passing.

“This is about denying peoples’ access to health care,” she said. “This is about inequity in the workplace.”

Heath has been successful with statewide referendums on gay rights. In February 1998, voters overturned a statewide anti-discrimination law that the Legislature had passed. Last November, voters again turned down such a law.