Straight, gay Mainers rally for equal rights

Gay and straight people together make up the fabric of small-town communities across Maine, Rep. Elizabeth Miller, D-Somerville, said Sunday.

They serve on the same school boards and town committees. They hold bake sales to raise funds for the same local library together.

So they deserve, Miller said, to have the same, equal, rights.

Miller was part of a crowd of straight and gay Mainers who gathered together on the steps of the Statehouse Sunday to rally for equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans.

The event, according to the Rev. Mark Doty of Bangor, was the first event in the country this week organized as part of the nationwide "Seven Straight Nights for Equal Rights." Across the country this week, straight Americans are being asked to stand up and assert their respect and support for the gay community.

Mark Hanks and his wife Mary Jude, of Orrington, did just that -- standing, proudly as a family on the Statehouse steps with Hank's ex-wife, Elise Senecal, and her partner, Rindy Fogler, with Hanks' and Senecal's teenage children, Becca and Daniel Hanks, at their sides to speak out for equal rights.

The four adults share parenting responsibilities, they said.

"We came together as a team, with a common goal to raise these children," Mark Hanks said. "A family, no matter how you define it, is built on two things -- love and respect."

Betsy Smith, executive director of Equality Maine, said Maine is better than many states in its protections for gay, lesbian and transgendered people.

But she said those protections need to be extended to include the protections that come with marriage, which she said is a right that should not be restricted to opposite-sex couples.

"One thousand, four hundred protections are automatically bestowed on people who are married," Smith said to the crowd of about 65 people gathered on a blustery Sunday afternoon. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, "need marriage. We need the same 1,400 protections married people have. Marriage is one of the most honored and respected institutions in this country. It's recognized everywhere. Marriage is an equal right."

Doty said he came to Maine after he was forced out of his leadership of a congregation of 3,200 people in Texas when he was "outed," even though he had never actually been with a man. He lost his wife, his home and his job.

"I've come to Maine and found a different life," said Doty of Hammond Street Congregational Church, UCC, in Bangor. "It really is the way life should be in so many ways. But we still have a ways to go."

Sandra Walker of Bangor said she was kicked out of her church of many years when church officials found out she is a lesbian. She now attends Doty's church, which she said has been great.

"It would be even greater, for me, if the young ones growing up have something more to look forward to than what I had to go through," she said Sunday.

U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-1st District, encouraged participants in their fight for equal rights.

"Sometimes it takes a long time to make good things happen," Allen said. "I urge you to keep on fighting for civil rights for all."