WESTBROOK – Westbrook would become the 12th community in Maine to adopt a gay rights ordinance under a proposal up for consideration by the City Council.

The measure would ban discrimination in employment, housing and at public accommodations based on a person’s sexual orientation.

Resident Susan Gilpin, who is leading the push for the ordinance, said the measure would mirror the statewide gay rights law that was overturned by voters in November 2000. In Westbrook, the vote was 4,066 in favor and 3,804 opposed.

Gilpin brought the matter to City Council Chairman Jim Violette, who referred it to a panel of councilors that will begin deliberating in March.

Violette said the panel could do one of three things: It could hold a public hearing, create the ordinance and send it to a council to vote; it could recommend a citizen initiative, which would require a petition drive for a referendum; or it could recommend that the council send the question directly to the voters.

Violette said he would like to see the matter go to voters.

He said he voted against the statewide referendum in 2000 because he believed laws prohibiting discrimination already existed. But he said he might reconsider his position should proof of discrimination based on sexual orientation arise.

“It will always be an emotional issue, but the idea here is to do what’s right for the taxpayers of Westbrook,” he said.

Gilpin, who’s heterosexual, said through conversations with gays that such discrimination exists. Many people, she said, fear their employers will fire them if their sexual orientation is known.

“Nobody is going to refuse to me an apartment because of my sexual orientation,” she said. “Why should anybody else live with that fear?”

Paul Volle, executive director for the Christian Coalition of Maine, said his organization plans to speak out against ordinance. He said it is unnecessary and grants “special protection” to one group of residents.