Gay-rights debate ‘stuck on stupid’

The current Question 1 battle between the Religious Right and the Gay Left marks a new low in the debate over gay rights. Now more than ever, both camps seem to be “stuck on stupid.”

Mike Heath, of the Christian Civic League of Maine reinforces every ugly stereotype of evangelical Christians as ignorant bigots. Recall that last year, Heath was suspended from his position as executive director for soliciting “tips, rumors, speculation and facts” about the sexual orientation of state legislators, posted on the league’s Web site under the headline, “Cleaning out the closet.” He’s on record as supporting the recriminalization of homosexual intimacy, and believes that adding “sexual orientation” to the Maine Human Rights Act amounts to society condoning “sexual sin.”

Heath thinks the gay-rights battle is really about legalizing same-sex marriage, even though the proposed amendment explicitly states that it cannot be construed to affect marriage statutes. What’s more, Maine enacted a citizen-initiated ban on same-sex marriage in 1997, so it’s hard to see how anyone but a conspiracy theorist could argue that the marriage laws will be impacted.

In short, Heath appears incapable of offering anyone a solid reason for opposing this legislation.

Meanwhile, gay activists and their allies in Maine’s media, academic and political elites have yet to make a convincing case that gays and lesbians are an economically disadvantaged, politically powerless minority entitled to special status under the civil-rights laws. They’ve falsely portrayed Maine as a dangerous, hateful place where homosexuals are summarily fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments by bigoted employers and landlords.

Like Heath, they’ve been at it for quite some time. Since the early 1990s, activists have worked closely with Maine’s highly partisan Attorney General’s office to create the false impression that gays and lesbians are the victims of a rising tide of hate crimes.

For its part, the AG’s office – first under Michael Carpenter and subsequently under Andrew Ketterer and his deputy, Stephen Wessler – actively solicited anonymous complaints of anti-gay name-calling and graffiti, then dishonestly reported these unverified, noncriminal incidents to the public in the same statistical category as violent felonies.

During his tenure in the AG’s hate-crimes unit, Wessler was a tireless advocate for gay-rights legislation and, in almost comical counterpoise to Heath, declared that Maine’s lack of such a statute was an “abomination.”

Today, Wessler runs a nonprofit advocacy outfit that just released a report touted as a “comprehensive and factual study” of anti-gay prejudice in Maine. It’s anything but.

Even if we assume that the incidents cited in Wessler’s study are fair condensations of the slights perceived by the respondents, there’s no way to tell if the subjects of Wessler’s study were actually victimized by anti-gay prejudice, or simply believed themselves to be. No one other than the alleged victims themselves was interviewed. The claims are unverified.

What’s worse, Wessler’s study deliberately and aggressively sought out respondents for purposes of the report. Despite fishing carefully where he knew the fish would be, Wessler found just 48 people who he determined had been “discriminated against.”

Three to five percent of the U.S. population is gay, which means that there’s most likely somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 gays and lesbians in Maine. No one knows for sure. But even if you quintuple the number of victims and accept Wessler’s findings as valid, less than one half of one percent of the state’s gay population has been victimized by anti-gay prejudice. It would appear that the vast majority of gays and lesbians in the state are going about their lives with no problem.

Does anti-gay bigotry exist in Maine? Of course. But does it rise to the level at which special legal status as a minority class is justified for “sexual orientation”? If it does, no one has presented a compelling case yet.

Mainers are fair-minded people. Show us the facts, and we arrive at the right decision. Until that happens, we should not allow our civil-rights laws to be hijacked by a special-interest group. Maine voters should vote yes on Question 1. Let’s not get stuck on stupid.

Lawrence Lockman of Amherst served as communications director for Concerned Maine Families during CMF’s 1996 petition drive to strengthen Maine’s statutory ban on same-sex marriage.