LEWISTON – Jean Hay, a 2nd District
congressional candidate who has made equal rights a
cornerstone of her campaign, took her organization to
Androscoggin County over the weekend to help support Equal
Protection Lewiston, the grass roots organization working to
protect the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in
that city.
The Blue Hill Democrat, her campaign manager, David Martucci,
and a number of her supporters joined a citywide,
door-to-door effort to distribute literature urging voters
there to keep in place the city's landmark
anti-discrimination ordinance.
Hay, an organic farmer who has also worked as a newspaper
reporter and as an aide to 1st District Congressman Tom
Andrews, said diversity is normal in nature.
''If the only carrots you know are store-bought carrots, you
might think that all carrots are straight,'' Hay said, ''but
we've grown, bagged, and sold more than 40 tons of carrots
over the last decade, and from my experience two to 10
percent of any crop are not straight.
''If that kind of diversity is good enough for God, it's good
enough for me.''
Lewiston is one of the few municipalities in Maine which
has passed its own equal rights ordinance designed to
protect the rights of homosexuals in matters of housing,
access to public facilities, employment, and credit, but an
effort to repeal it has been mounted. Equal Protection
Lewiston was formed to fight the repeal and urge voters to
keep the ordinance in place.