TY - JOUR AU - Osborne, Geraint AU - Wilton, Shauna PY - 2022/12/22 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - “Defenders of perversion”: Professing Same-Sex Marriage Rights in the Local Press JF - Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning JA - ESJ VL - 8 IS - 3 SE - Essays DO - 10.15402/esj.v8i3.70358 UR - https://esj.usask.ca/index.php/esj/article/view/70358 SP - 32-51 AB - <p>This case study provides an important socio-historical snapshot of the same-sex marriage debate in a small city in central Alberta between December 2004 and August 2005. We explore the relationship between professors and small-town newspapers in fostering democratic dialogues on key social issues through an analysis of faculty columns and the responding Letters to the Editor in a local paper. In so doing, this research focuses on two social groups located in a particular social environment, each representing a particular frame: the professors working in the local university who maintained an op-ed column in the local paper and supported a equality frame; and the general public living in Camrose and the surrounding rural area who supported a morality frame. This article contributes to our understanding of scholarly engagement in the town-gown context, the democratic role of the press, and how a particularly contentious social and political issue—same-sex marriage—was experienced and framed by concerned citizens in a small conservative rural city that is also the home to a liberal arts and sciences university campus.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p> ER -