Fact Check: Yes, Paul LePage Wants to Overturn the Maine Human Rights Act

The Maine Human Rights Act is a law prohibiting employment, housing, public accommodation, credit, or educational discrimination on account of various sociodemographic characteristics of individuals including race, color, ancestry, sex, marital status and religion. In 2005, the Maine Human Rights Act was amended to prohibit discrimination in provision of credit, educational, employment, housing, or public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation. In 2005 and earlier this year, anti-gay forces in Maine made efforts to repeal the anti-discrimination provision by mounting a “people’s veto,” a feature of Maine law that allows laws to be overturned by a majority referendum vote. The 2005 effort was rejected by Maine citizens’ popular vote; this year’s effort didn’t even get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

On Tuesday July 13 2010, the Maine Democratic Party issued a press release claiming that Paul LePage had declared his intention to overturn the Maine Human Rights Act, despite the failure of two successive efforts to re-legalize discrimination against gay and lesbian people in the state. The press release read:

Mayor Paul LePage, has openly called for the repeal of the Maine Human Rights Act. The Act prohibits discrimination based on one’s race, color,sex, sexual orientation and religion. The sexual orientation clause was an amendment to the Act that passed with broad support from Maine voters in 2005.Yet Mr. LePage has said, “My thinking would be it clearly needs to be brought back and reformed. It should be challenged and brought back to the legislature.”(http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss52956.xml)

Unfortunately, apart from the hyperlink provided in the Maine Democrats’ press release, the text appears nowhere else on the internet. The “talkshoe” link itself directs us to a long xml list of links to dozens of hour-long radio shows by the Aroostook Watchmen, not directly to the source for Paul LePage’s quote itself. The context of the quote is not provided, either.

This meant that it was time for us to run a fact check, and to facilitate that I challenged Irregular Times readers this morning to find, identify, and link to the direct primary source in which Paul LePage’s alleged remark in favor of discrimination occurred. Within hours, you rose to the challenge and provided the link. Thanks, Bruce and Tim.

The Aroostook Watchmen’s interview of Paul LePage on the subject (with then-fellow candidate Bill Beardsley) can be found here: http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-52956/TS-317643.mp3 (I’ve saved a copy to my personal computer and will make it available directly on Irregular Times servers if anyone tries to take the original down). You can listen to Paul LePage’s full remarks on the subject beginning roughly at 1 hour and 3 minutes in, or you can read a transcription of the unredacted exchange here:

Aroostook Watchmen: Would you work to have the Maine Human Rights Act rescinded, revoked, eliminated, whatever your choice of words would be, because the 2005 Human Rights Act is where the sexual orientation question was allowed to sneak under the tent. And without getting rid of the insane wording in that document, there’s nothing you can do. This will come back every time you come around.

Paul LePage: My thinking would be it clearly needs to be brought back and reformed. The law needs to be reformed. In fact, I’m not even so sure that the rules that they’re putting in place now don’t need to go back to the legislature. I think that they’ve gone beyond the intent of the law, and they’re clearly making a law, and in my mind at least I think it probably should be challenged and brought back to the legislature. I think the only thing, Maine’s funny: in the last 30 years you know you hear everybody on the street talking about these type of the issues. And they complain, complain, and complain. But every year we seem to be sendind back the same people we complain about. So it’s up to the Maine people to take a stand. The best place and the strongest place to take a stand is this fall in November. Send a real strong message and change the mentality of the people we send to Augusta. And then we can bring the laws, make laws that have some common sense and common decency and don’t use our children as pawns.

The full quote shows that yes, Paul LePage did declared his intention to undo protections against discrimination. If you live in Maine, it’s worth considering what LePage would do to change the state if he made it into the Blaine House.