Monday, July 1, 2002
Maine residents care for health benefits
A story published today by the Portland Press Herald reports that the Christian Civic League of Maine has dropped its attempt to overturn a law that would, among other things, have done away with health insurance benefits for the domestic partners of state employees.
"We couldn't get the signatures," Michael Heath, the league's executive director, said Sunday. "People were not signing the petitions."
The League and the Christian Coalition of Maine were trying to force a vote that would forbid the state and municipalities from providing domestic partner benefits.
"The issue we heard the most about as we attempted to gather signatures was the issue of health care, and Mainers' legitimate concerns with health care and the perception that what we were doing was trying to deny people the opportunity to have health insurance, and that did not sit well with anybody," Heath said. "That doesn't sit well with me."
Heath said his objection to domestic partnership benefits, which are extended to unmarried straight couples and to gay couples, who by law cannot get married, is a moral one.
"We are objecting to the creation of a legal and social structure with respect to health insurance that takes into account nonmarried relationships between man and woman or man and man or woman and woman," he said. "We don't see laws created that are going to provide rights, legal rights, on the basis of immoral activity."
The public's refusal to force a question on the matter is about as graphic a display as there is that Maine people care deeply about health insurance, said State Rep. Ben Dudley, a Democrat from Portland and the sponsor of the law that the League had wanted to overturn.
Dudley's law, which passed with wide support from Democrats and Republicans, requires health insurance companies to offer domestic partner benefits if they offer coverage to the spouses of plan members.
"The Christian Civic League, if they were to go forward with a repeal, would be taking away people's health insurance, so I would imagine they'd be very reluctant to do that," Dudley said. "I'm not surprised that they were having difficulty finding interest — they were aligning themselves with the HMOs on this one."
