Maine voters to decide Anti-Bias Law

Maine governor, Democrat John Baldacci, has signed into law a piece of legislation that would add sexual orientation to the state's human rights act after the state legislature readily passed it. Similar legislation has been put to popular vote twice before and been defeated.

Naturally, the local homophobes Christian Civic League has gotten on the warpath to defeat it, organizing a petition to force the issue to be brought to a vote once again in order to have it repealed. (More on the story here.)

The law's opponents claim that it's a backdoor (pun intended) way for gay activists to get the state's defense of marriage law overturned. And of course they're trotting out the old "we're having a distasteful lifestyle forced on us against the will of the people" whine tasting.

Here's the thing.

1. Once more with feeling: GAY MARRIAGE DOESN'T HURT ANYBODY. And if you don't like it, don't marry someone of the same sex. How hard is that?
2. The reason Gov. Baldacci has brought this legislation up is not that he's a Big Gay Activist-- he actually claims to be against gay marriage. Rather, he said that fully a third of the crimes in his state's hate crimes file were targeted at gays and lesbians. Clearly, as a compassionate human being, he feels that it is wrong for an innocent person to be attacked for who they are.
3. Gays and lesbians being protected under this act is not special treatment. In fact, what I would call special treatment is to be part of a class of people who are able to walk down the street without having to fear that they will be harassed and/or attacked for who they are-- like, um, I don't know, STRAIGHT PEOPLE.
4. The whole "will of the people" thing just doesn't fly with me. Because, see, the way things work is that every individual citizen does not get the chance to weigh in on every single last decision that's made in the course of governing the land. See, we PICK people to do some of that for us and we PAY them to do it so that we don't all have to spend our days being nickled and dimed to death with all the countless decisions a government has to make. And presumably, the citizens who vote get to pick the people who will best represent the will of the people. So I would have to say, if you don't like the decisions that the Legislature YOU picked and the Governor YOU picked aren't making on your behalf, then maybe you should turn your considerable energies towards picking new people at your next opportunity. And if you still don't end up with people who are interested in a Christian theocracy, then maybe you should stop to consider whether your position truly represents the will of the people, or just your own tiny, grinchy, unhappy, repressed, hate-filled little tunnel view of the world and maybe that of the folks at the last covered dish potluck.
5. Just think, if you stopped poking the gay people with sticks and started putting your energy to something useful, like maybe feeding the poor, improving education, picking up litter, and being a friend to man (if not a friend to Dorothy), how much ACTUAL good you could do in the world! Why, it might even make you...happy. *gasp* Let's stop and think for a minute, what would Jesus do? Feed the masses, or lobby against hate crime legislation? Hey, I went to Sunday school, I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one.

So, why do Maine's Christians want gay people to get attacked and killed?