As Maine Goes

Here's the trailer for Question One, a documentary by Joe Fox on the 2009 referendum that repealed marriage equality in Maine; which is highly relevant now because our side has put the measure back on the ballot for a referendum this coming November.

(Note: "Yes" vote = "traditional marriage"; "No" vote = marriage equality.)


Question One - Trailer from Fly On The Wall Productions on Vimeo.

Excerpt from an extensive article about the 2009 referendum and the filming of both campaigns by Joe Fox in the Advocate:

“This referendum campaign isn’t about us hating gays,” Pastor Bob Emmerich would say over and over again as part of the campaign stump speech or in scores of television interviews and public debates. “It’s about defending marriage.”

But then when the cameras weren’t rolling – except ours — Emmerich, the co-chairman for the Yes campaign, would add: “The big question that’s behind all of this really has to be answered and asked by individuals: are we as a society ready to give complete approval to homosexuality? Are we prepared to say as a society that it’s normal or healthy or OK? I don’t like being forced into that question, but that’s what it comes down to.”

So, strip down all the political messaging and you end up with: “They’re not healthy. They’re not normal.”

I listened syllable by syllable to their words, punctuated by pauses and long silences and repetition until I realized what drove them and who they really were as people. I would catch campaign volunteer Linda Seavey stopping in mid-sentence, her eyes darting around frantically, unsure of where to go next. “If this issue, if this issue,” said Seavey, “does not go the way, the way that I want to it to…”

A pause.

“I just… I… I… I…”

A longer pause.

“Because people, people, people just don’t... they don’t…”

Seavey was now silent. For what seemed to be several minutes, she just stared out the window. “Stop there,” she finally concluded.

What was behind Seavey’s stops and starts? Her pauses, I surmised, disguised a feeling of being so overwhelmed by a world that in her view had gone mad. It left her at times unable to talk. Gays being allowed to marry? Seavey was fueled by outrage and a sense of injustice. Things were terribly wrong, and she was powerless to do anything about it.

It was Seavey who now felt like the outsider. And that realization turned out to be my “aha” moment. . . .

Note: Seavey is the church lady we see in the documentary planting "Yes" signs along the roadside.