Maine voters consider overturning same-sex marriage

BANGOR, Maine - The next bellwether battle over same-sex marriage will be settled in Maine Tuesday by an expected 500,000 voters, about as many as cast ballots last year in Sacramento County when the nation's most-populous state, California, repealed same-sex marriage.

Voters in Maine will be the first in the nation to decide whether to overturn a law approving same-sex marriage after it was passed by a state legislature and signed by a governor.

The tussle over the measure, known as Question 1, is a contest between Mainers' "live and let live" values and the moral power of the Catholic Church, which is leading the effort to overturn the law. Approved in May, the law has yet to take effect. Polls show the race in a dead heat, with few voters undecided.

With Portland and the state's wealthier coastal areas expected to oppose the measure and northern parts of Maine supporting it, the swing areas will be around the French Catholic towns of Lewiston and Auburn, the former mill town of Biddeford and Bangor.

Pamella Starbird Beliveau and her children were baptized at Prince of Peace Parish in Lewiston. She wears a 3-inch-long crucifix from a rainbow-colored necklace she crocheted.

But when the priest said last month that instead of a homily the Catholic diocese had asked churches to play a DVD urging parishioners to support Question 1, Beliveau walked to the back of the church in a tearful protest.

"That is probably the loneliest moment that I've spent during this whole time," said Beliveau, who weeks earlier joined the newly formed Catholics for Marriage Equality to show it was possible to oppose the church from a "prayerful, discerning, educated place."

Beliveau worries about the church's influence. "There's not a lot of conversation going on about this in Lewiston," she said. She paused. "I want to believe that's quiet support" for same-sex marriage.

In an attempt to blunt the power of the church in Lewiston, No on 1 organizers are escorting 1,800 of central Maine's 8,000 college students to the polls before Tuesday.

Two students from Bates College in Lewiston recently hopped in Gabe Gonzalez's car and he shuttled them to Lewiston City Hall to vote early -- his 10th such run in two hours. Gonzalez, a 22-year-old resident of Riverside County, raised $200 to travel from California to Maine for a "volunteer vacation" campaigning against the measure.

In Orrington, population 3,526, Ken Graves worked as a lumberjack for nine years after he started Calvary Chapel near Bangor. Twenty-five years later, the 47-year-old still sports a woodsman's thick arms and tough hands as he towers over an evangelical congregation of 1,500, one of Maine's largest.

Last week, Graves stood on the bank of the nearby Penobscot River clad in a red flannel shirt, where he and a videographer filmed a 30-second ad in favor of Question 1. He'll pay "a few thousand dollars" to air it locally.

"What got me is how the homosexual community being portrayed in this campaign is a gross misrepresentation of how it really is," Graves said. "You see these commercials of two happy moms, or two happy dads and happy siblings -- when in fact they are not happy families. They are depressed."

He acknowledged that he doesn't know any gay families, saying he relies on the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank that finds homosexuality "harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large," and Focus on the Family, a group that helps people "overcome" gay attractions.

Maine families can be found at community hockey rinks. In the stands at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston, Lisa Lauzier and Jeff Buiniskas bundled up in thick coats as their son practiced.

Same-sex marriage? Buiniskas smiled. "It's not something I talk about with the guys at work," said the insulation installer. "A lot of them are pretty conservative. But some wouldn't care."

Lauzier, who supports the state's same-sex marriage law, said friends brought it up the night before. "My neighbor shocked me," she said. "He was totally against (the law.) He was like, 'Enough is enough.' "

Folks around Biddeford, population 23,000, are most worried about their jobs. In June, a 159-year-old textile mill closed, putting 121 people out of work in this blue-collar town bounded by wealthy vacation homes.

"This marriage thing is a freedom of choice thing to me," said yard manager Graham Ganz, 31, as he huddled with co-workers at Rumery's Boat Yard around doughnuts the boss dropped off for their break. "People like to ...moan about (same-sex marriage), but a lot of those people aren't going to come out and vote."

Ten years ago, Fred Steeves, 44, would have opposed same-sex marriage. Back then, he said, "I was a Bible-preaching conservative." The boat repairman is still religious. But now he thinks about the lesbian couple who run a restaurant he frequents in Portland.

"God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," Steeves said as his co-workers laughed. He hasn't decided how he'll vote. "But when I do, I'll probably flash to" those women.

In rural Bangor, Roger Tracy thinks, "the idea that Christians are supposed to be tolerant is nonsense." He just stopped at neighbor Jean Barry's to pick up another dozen Yes on 1 signs for the 100-member evangelical church where he is the pastor.

"Jesus wasn't tolerant of sin," said Tracy, a retired sheriff's deputy. "Homosexuality is a sin."

About 100 yards down the road, Jay Fletcher, 28, lives with his partner and raises Dobermans. Fletcher, a bartender who grew up nearby, said he hasn't experienced animosity in the eight years he's been out as a gay man. "A lot of the butchest guys will come into the restaurant, and they're totally cool with me," he said.

E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli(at)sfchronicle.com.

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