Last week, George Mason University students massed to urge voters to shoot down a constitutional same-sex marriage ban on the November ballot in Virginia.
Ryan Gleason says he was taken by surprise. Hearing of the planned rally just a few days before, the 22-year-old economics major and campus coordinator for Students-4-Marriage scrambled to mobilize a protest against the protest.
“At GMU, we still need to work at getting our message out,” Gleason said on Saturday, following Thursday’s public stance against the larger “vote no” contingent.
Gleason is on one side of a vigorous argument over the merits, side effects and necessity of the amendment to Virginia’s constitution that has charged the student body at the Fairfax County university. While the Nov. 7 referendum roils in the public sphere, GMU student activists in both camps are whipping up support on campus. The controversial amendment would define marriage as strictly between a man and a woman and serve as a test of the public support for the General Assembly’s opposition to same-sex unions.
“It would be the first amendment to Virginia’s Bill of Rights that would take away rights of people, as opposed to giv[ing] rights,” said Erin Neff, a 20-year-old psychology major and a leader of Vote No GMU.
She pointed to outdated concepts of “traditional” marriage, such as that they were once limited to people of the same race. Echoing arguments from other Northern Virginia groups, she says she believes language in the amendment could also disrupt domestic-violence protections and legal contracts; Gleason and Virginia’s attorney general disagree. Gleason said protecting marriage as an institution is essential to the nation’s economic well-being, and argues the amendment would “make it harder for activist judges” to strike down existing marriage laws.
“Marriage is foundational to our culture,” he said. “It is foundational to how America works.”
