Why is Their Picture on the Wedding Page? : A Rural Community Responds to a Union Announcement / Kathleen A. Tiemann

K. Tiemann

On August 17, 2003, two women placed a union announcement in the Grand Forks Herald and became the first same-sex couple in North Dakota to do so (Lee, 2003). This announcement generated a flood of letters, both pro and con, that appeared in on the editorial page in the Herald over the next several weeks. In this exploratory study, I conduct a content analysis of those letters. Through this analysis, the three primary thematic categories emerged upon which writers based their arguments. They include those grounded in issues of tolerance, arguments based on Christian values and Scripture and those that focused on normalization. Additionally, the letters reveal something about rural versus urban sensibilities in that relatively more urban Grand Forks residentswere less likely to write negative letters than their counterparts from neighboring small towns. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings and suggestions for future research.[Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA]