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Tuesday, the UMaine UVote committee held a same-sex marriage discussion in the FFA Room of the Memorial Union. The Women in the Curriculum luncheon continued the discussion in the Coe Room the following Wednesday.
The discussion on Tuesday consisted of commercials from both campaigns, followed by discussion. Wednesday, gay faculty members from UMaine presented different situations and information in favor of same-sex marriage, while a few members of the luncheon offered their perspectives against same-sex marriage. Both discussions touched on each side of the campaign, with reasoning coming from sexual, religious, moral and economical standings.
To kick off the discussion on Tuesday, both “Yes on 1” and “No on 1” advertisements were presented. Three out of four of the advertisements shown were about young children wanting to learn about homosexuality. One of the advertisements included a child who approached his teacher to ask about gay sex. Many of the teachers in the advertisements became frightened by the question.
Matthew Newman, software engineer for the UMaine Biology New Media Lab, offered a perspective on the cause of anti-gay fear.
“This is a puritanically derived American society. We have issues with sex in general. Most of the people here probably would have issues with seeing someone make out publicly. It’s almost comical because you can’t even teach a biology course without seeing some animal sexually with some sort of other animal, but the idea simply is that we, as a culture, have an issue with sex. Not with homosexual sex — the culture has an issue with sexuality in general, and they don’t want to see it. It’s been an issue with the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] and it’s been an issue with every conceivable aspect of the culture,” Newman said.
At Wednesday’s event, UMaine student Emily Albee offered her personal experience from working with seventh graders. She said school and marriage do not mix.
“Marriage is not talked about in classrooms,” Albee said. “We have students coming from many different types of families, and that’s just not something we focus on. We focus on loving and respecting each other and it [gay marriage] is not an issue.”
No on 1 brought up education and the economical benefits voting No on 1 may possibly have for Maine.
“The creative economy is part of Maine, and if we welcome the people from the creative economy, all the industries will see Maine is a progressive state,” said Vicky Blanchette, a member of the UMaine engineering department. “So to talk about the economy, it is going to help tremendously because businesses will want to come here and talk to young, educated people about jobs and industry, and I definitely think the economy will be affected by that.”
Both discussions carried on into the topic of religion, where some Yes on 1 supporters said various religions define marriage as a man and a woman, and the dictionary definition is the same.
Tuesday, political science student Samantha Hansen said the religious argument does not make sense to her.
In response to either argument, facts brought up on Tuesday stated Christianity and Islam are among the most prominent religions in the United States, and they define marriage as between a man and a woman. The group concluded it is hard to wage an argument against God and religious beliefs.
Newman disagreed.
“For one, people may say, ‘God made this and this, and it was good.’ But that doesn’t mean that something else was not good. It’s taking the idea that Adam and Eve as a heterosexual couple was something natural and good, then someone else taking it out of contexts and saying, ‘Well, something that is not that, is not good,’ which is simply flawed logic. Two, they’re historically documented same-sex literalizes in the earliest forms of the Christian church. So to say that you’re defending marriage that isn’t inclusive of same-sex marriage is simply historically false,” Newman said.
Amy Fried, a political science professor at UMaine, said despite the arguments offered, Yes on 1’s biggest argument is that allowing same-sex marriage destroys traditional marriage. This brought up the topic that Yes on 1 believes giving homosexuals equality infringes on the rights of heterosexuals’ marriage.
Fifth-year women’s studies student Melanie Rockefeller said this concept did not click for her.
“I really don’t understand,” Rockefeller said, “especially since it says right there in the law that churches don’t have to perform marriages to people that they don’t want to. I really just don’t understand how allowing gays and lesbians to get married would infringe on anybody’s religious beliefs.”
Fried went on to bring the topic back to the definition of marriage.
“The argument is that marriage exists to have children, [and] to raise children. … The children need a mother and a father,” Fried said.
Fourth-year sociology student Alyssa Radmore wonders if she did not want to have kids, where does that leave her right to marry?
“It’s a very strong possibility in my life that I won’t want to have kids. I don’t feel maternal, though I know that I would have good children because I was raised with good morals and values. I could do that for a child, but I don’t know if that’s what I want. So why am I allowed to get married when I might not be fulfilling the purpose of marriage?” Radmore said.
“What are they to tell the children in which their families are denied?” Blanchette asked.
