Challenge to Bangor’s anti-discrimination rule fails

BANGOR – Though they came close, foes of the city’s year-old anti-discrimination ordinance were unable to gather enough signatures to force a referendum aimed at repealing it.

At issue was the equal rights ordinance city councilors adopted by an 8-1 vote Sept. 24, 2001.

The measure prohibits discrimination in the city based on sexual orientation in the areas of housing, employment, education, credit application and public accommodations.

When the deadline for signatures elapsed Wednesday, ordinance opponents were about 200 signatures short of the 2,274 needed to bring the matter to a citywide referendum, City Solicitor Norman Heitmann said Thursday.

Had the anti-discrimination ordinance repeal campaign been successful, the repeal would have remained in effect for three years, unless a competing referendum occurred before then.

Heitmann said the minimum number of signatures needed equaled 20 percent of the number of Bangor residents who voted in last month’s gubernatorial election.

To be valid, the signatures needed to come from Bangor residents who were registered voters, Heitmann said. The bulk of the signatures the group collected, or 1,980, were gathered at the city’s nine polling places on Election Day.

In October, a 10-member committee delivered a petition to City Hall, marking the first step in the effort to have the ordinance “repealed and deleted in its entirety.”

The Rev. Dr. Jerry Mick, pastor of Bangor Baptist Church, was on the committee and was first to sign the document. Several other committee members also belong to Mick’s church.

On Thursday, Mick said that the petition effort would have succeeded had it occurred before last month’s election, which he said drew an unusually high number of voters because of Gov.-elect John Baldacci’s candidacy. Baldacci is a native of Bangor.

“We came close,” Mick said. “We had support from thousands of people. Even though we lost, we won,” Mick said, by sending city officials the message that many residents did not agree with their decision to enact the anti-discrimination ordinance.

He said he and other repeal proponents had not decided if they would make another attempt. “We shall see. Time will tell,” he said.

“I’m really surprised that they didn’t get enough signatures,” said Daniel Williams, who was responsible for getting the city to adopt the ordinance. Williams said Thursday that the failure of the campaign to repeal it might be attributed, in part, to successful efforts to educate the community.

When Mick announced the repeal campaign earlier this year, he said he opposed the ordinance on moral and legal grounds.

As evangelical Christians, Mick, members of his church and others of similar belief systems endorse the concept of “biblical marriage,” which Mick earlier said the Bible defines as a long-term, committed union between a man and a woman.

Mick said existing civil rights laws prohibit discrimination based on color, sex and race, among other factors that cannot be changed.

He said sexual orientation was a behavior and, as such, can be changed. He said some in his congregation had done so.

Ordinance supporters, however, saw the matter differently.

“It’s not a gay issue, it’s a civil rights issue,” Williams said Thursday. He also said that the ordinance does not extend to any group “special rights,” as some have said.

Williams said that the ordinance protects people in five categories of sexual orientation: heterosexual, bisexual, transgender, asexual and homosexual.

Bangor is one of 12 Maine municipalities to adopt a gay rights ordinance. Efforts to repeal ordinances in Portland and Westbrook have been unsuccessful. Lewiston’s ordinance was overturned in 1993 by a 2-1 ratio.