If, as Paul warned the Romans, there are wages for sin, Michael Heath

and his Christian Civic League of Maine want to make sure they come without benefits.

This presumes, of course, that it is a sin for unmarried adults to live together. It’s a presumption many people refrain from making, but Mr. Heath and his league freely make it and, in fact, are basing their next political campaign upon it.

At issue is the policy of a growing number of employers – state and local government, educational institutions and businesses – to offer health insurance to the domestic partners of employees, straight or gay. Maine state government adopted such a policy early this year. Portland followed with a municipal ordinance this spring. The University of Maine and Bates and Bowdoin colleges have offered the benefit for some time, as have such businesses as L.L. Bean and Maine Medical Center. The Legislature this past session passed a law requiring insurance carriers to make the benefit available as an option, with the stipulation that employers buying insurance for employees are in no way required to buy that option.

There are several good reasons for this. Affordable health care is one of Maine’s most pressing needs, the costs of caring for the uninsured most often are passed on to the insured and anything that extends coverage in a rational way should be encouraged. Insurance pools usually consist of people with nothing more in common than being of similar age, of sharing a hobby or of working in the same building, whereas people who choose to live together and to share the responsibilities of running a household have something more in common and are, just like the best of married couples, likely to have a genuine interest in the health status of the partner. Public-sector employers, government and education, must be able to compete with the private for the best employees and the benefits package often is a significant factor.

None of this apparently matters to the league, which sees this practice as a direct assault upon marriage and as an irreversible step down the slippery slope to state-sanctioned gay marriage. And so the league is ready to defend Maine from this peril with a citizen-initiated referendum that would prohibit any taxpayer-funded entity – state or local – from offering this benefit, even if all of the additional cost is borne by the employee, and would repeal the new state law.

The league must consider marriage an awfully fragile institution if it believes couples will not marry if they can live together and still get the same insurance coverage. And its relentless panic over gay marriage is increasingly an alarm in search of a crisis. Yet the referendum campaign is on. The ballot question has been approved by the Secretary of state’s Office and the league now is mobilizing the petition drive. Some 42,000 signatures are required and it is likely that the league’s weak arguments can be overcome by its well-practiced signature-gathering prowess and the fact that it has until next June to get the job done. As shown in its two successful referendums against equal protection for gays under Maine’s anti-discrimination laws, the league expends considerable resources and energy on these campaigns – perhaps one day it will expend similar resources and energy on a foe worthy of the attention, such as domestic violence, child abuse, hunger or poverty.

There is a bright side. In recent comments on the issue, Mr. Heath said his group believes it is just as immoral for unmarried straight couples to live together as it is for gay couples. Call it equal opportunity in damnation.