Gutter phenomenon BY AL DIAMON

The hypocrites won.

Even though I’m writing this column several days before the November 8 election, I can make that pronouncement with some confidence, considering how both supporters and opponents of gay rights conducted campaigns that achieved levels of hypocrisy usually reserved for the likes of Larry Lucchino, William J. Bennett, Bill Clinton, and high-ranking members of the Bush administration.

Both sides built their appeals to voters around claims they knew were false. And both sides flat-out lied whenever it was suggested they were being less than forthcoming about their real agendas.

Let’s start with Maine Won’t Discriminate, the group that fought in favor of a law granting civil rights to gay men and lesbians. From the beginning of the debate, MWD insisted the measure had nothing to do with same-sex marriage. At the public hearing on the bill last March, Betsy Smith, executive director of Equality Maine (the pro-gay lobbying group that spawned MWD), told reporters the legislation dealt exclusively with discrimination.

Less than two months earlier, Smith had co-authored an op-ed piece in the Portland Press Herald. "Mainers will come to understand why it is time to end the denial of marriage rights to committed same-sex couples and their children," she wrote. "We hope this happens sooner rather than later."

Only when it became obvious the opposition would focus on same-sex marriage did Smith and her legislative allies insert language in the bill explicitly stating it would have no effect on matrimony. But that clause did nothing to alter MWD’s real goal.

The group received repeated warnings from political pros last spring that it needed to defuse the marriage issue. One consultant (subsequently fired) suggested Republican legislators who supported the bill hold a news conference to stress they would have opposed the law if it had anything to do with unisex nuptials. MWD leaders reacted with horror. Such a move, they said, would damage future efforts to legalize gay marriage.

So Michael Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine and leader of the anti-homosexual crusade, was right, after all. Passing a gay-rights law really was just a step on the road to boys getting hitched to boys and girls waltzing down the aisle with girls.

But being right that one time doesn’t make Heath any less of a hypocrite.

Whenever he wasn’t droning on about how same-sex marriage would lead to the "disintegration of the Christian West," Heath was discounting MWD’s claim that gays and lesbians in Maine were the victims of discrimination. During a televised debate on October 14, he dismissed cases of alleged bias mentioned by the law’s supporters as "bogus" and ignored a question about whether he thought it was okay to discriminate against homosexuals.

But Heath does believe discrimination is right. He’s said on numerous occasions that sodomy should be illegal, with anyone caught engaging in sex acts that aren’t on his approved list being subject to "modest" penalties. He’s advocated (perhaps with tongue in cheek) amending the Constitution to ban a gay entertainer from the airwaves. He’s urged readers of his email newsletter to complain to a local charity because the organization hired a contractor who was a lesbian. He’s suggested God caused Hurricane Katrina to destroy New Orleans because the city was hosting a gay pride event. He’s called proponents of gay rights "desperately evil."

When it’s suggested his comments are excellent examples of the discrimination he claims doesn’t exist, Heath goes into martyr mode.

"What we have in our nation today is McCarthyism in reverse," he wrote in an op-ed piece, "as the backers of the homosexual-rights movement have risen to key positions of power within out institutions. All those who refuse to accept homosexuality as normal are smeared as ‘bigoted’ and ‘intolerant.’ "

In a brochure published by the Coalition for Marriage, Heath’s political action committee, the group claims, "Maine’s homosexual rights law is aimed at people of faith and is a direct threat to our cherished freedoms of association, religion, and free speech."

When Heath plays the victim, he reminds me of a character in I’m Not Stiller, a novel by Max Frisch. "He always feels assailed, even when I have no intention of attacking him," Frisch’s narrator said, "and this leads to severe bouts of self-satisfaction."

How refreshing it would have been during the long campaign over this issue to have heard an advocate for the anti-discrimination law list marriage as a right every bit as important to gays and lesbians as housing, employment, or credit. How exhilarating it would have been to have witnessed Heath admitting he judges people based on their sexual orientation, regardless of what other qualities they might possess.

How discouraging it is to have had such an important question decided by the arguments of hypocrites.

Give it to me straight — or gay — by emailing ishmaelia@gwi.net