copyright 2009, The Washington Post PORTLAND, Maine -- Canvassers are knocking on the doors of saltbox houses and slogans are pinned to yellow slickers. But outside the Pine Tree State, next month's referendum on gay marriage is the vote that dare not speak its name. Even as President Obama delivers a high-profile speech about gay rights on Saturday -- the eve of a national march for equality on the Mall -- Maine's landmark gay marriage legislation remains practically a secret. With low-volume murmurs of support from the institutional advocates and opponents of gay marriage, Maine's operatives, on both sides of the issue, are curious to find themselves nearly alone before an election that will determine the national gay-rights agenda. 'We're focused on Maine people talking to Mainers,' said Jesse Connolly, who is running the campaign to protect the nation's first gay marriage bill to have successfully passed through the traditional legislative process. A schlubby Red Sox fanatic who wore orange Crocs on a recent rainy weekend, Connolly lives south of the state's largest city (population 65,000) with his wife and son. He's an unlikely figure to be leading the rainbow-bearing ranks as new gay leaders and activists demand concrete results from Congress and the White House. 'If we're successful,' said Connolly, 'it will give a shot in the arm to Washington.' Connolly's conservative counterpart, Marc Mutty, plays more to type. The chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine said he agreed to lead the opposition campaign 'because my boss told me to.' His boss is Richard Malone, bishop of the Portland Roman Catholic diocese, which has unequivocally thrown itself into the election, going so far as to pass around collection plates at Sunday Masses to fund the campaign. But Mutty, too, professes astonishment at the lack of interest from leading national conservatives such as Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. 'What happens here is of great national import,' he said. 'A lot of our folks seem to not fully get that.' The state's failure to get noticed is due to the simple fact that the vote will not take place in, say, California, where an expensive and bruising win for gay marriage opponents last year shook the national body politic for weeks. Since then, many dependable gay Democratic fundraisers have felt burned -- and decidedly less generous. Plus, progressive lawmakers, worried about the 2010 midterm elections, have shied from the issue. And within the gay leadership in Washington, established politicians and a freshman class of bolder legislators disagree as to whether the Maine campaign should be central to a larger federal push for equality. Those frustrated voices are lobbying Obama to include a reference to the Maine referendum in his speech. Any failure to do so would be the last straw for many gay activists fed up with the small-bore approach of the Obama White House, the Washington-based gay lobby and the Democratic Party's gay elders. (A Democratic source familiar with the White House's thinking on the speech said Obama will stress incremental advancements as evidence of progress.) 'You need to encourage elected officials,' said Barney Frank, D-Mass., the highest-ranking openly gay political figure in the country, who met his partner at a fundraiser in Ogunquit, Maine, during a successful 2005 campaign to keep sexual orientation in the state's non-discrimination policy. Frank has attended and spoken at fundraisers here and in Washington and New York supporting marriage equality in Maine, and has argued that passing gay marriage in Maine would add pressure on national legislators. But Frank, who has called Sunday's march 'useless,' is part of a generation of gay advocates who lived much of their lives in the closet and considered marriage something of a pipe dream. He thinks everything must done at a measured pace. 'We don't have the votes to (repeal) DOMA,' he said, referring to the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law explicitly stipulating that marriage is between a man and a woman. 'We do have the votes to pass hate crimes, the employment non-discrimination acts and get domestic-partner benefits for federal employees. To divert energy for that, to a bill we have no possibility of passage, doesn't sound smart to me.' But new gay leaders in Washington make no distinction between Maine and Congress. They want equality everywhere -- and now. Jared Polis, D-Colo., a gay freshman representative, has broken with Frank and emerged as a spokesman in Washington for a bolder agenda. Along with lesbian Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. and nearly 100 other members of Congress, he has signed on to legislation introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., that would repeal DOMA. Polis' allies are directly involved in the Maine effort. Andy Szekeres, his campaign's deputy finance director, is now the Maine campaign's finance director. 'Some of the next generation of LGBT opinion leaders think more boldly than the preceding generation,' said Polis. 'We grew up in a different environment than people who grew up in the 1960s or the 1970s. The new generation grew up in a post-AIDS-crisis world. I don't know anybody who died of AIDS, and for a gay man 20 years ago, that would have been a shocking statement. But most of my peers don't either. We're not characterized by being survivors.' Downtown Portland, which is the state's reliable bastion of social liberalism and the center of gravity for gay Maine, reflects that view. In coffee shops, baristas and their tastefully tattooed clientele wear buttons supporting gay marriage. Signs urging a 'no' vote on the referendum hang in storefronts. Rainbow lights advertise 'Pride' directly under neon Miller Lite signs in gay-bar windows. A much-anticipated gay-marriage benefit concert with all the best local bands will be held on Oct. 17 at the Empire Dine and Dance. 'I know ridiculous amounts of people who are supportive,' said Conor Tubbs, a 22-year-old bartender who recently nursed a shot glass filled with ice chips to numb a new piercing between his lip and nose. He sat at Styxx, a gay club off Spring Street, and said opposition will surely wane. 'Those voices are being heard less,' he said. 'A lot of people in my generation are going to be in charge soon anyway.' 