Let's talk about sex, let's talk about you & me

Author: Douglas Hale

On Monday, April 25, Carr Hall hosted a deliberate dialogue forum addressing several issues concerning sex and sexuality in our society. Entitled "Sex: Making Public Policy for Private Passions," the event was designed to address separatism and contentious issues under the general label of sex perceived both on the Middlebury campus and in the national community. Discussion of these issues and concerns from a cross-section of campus was intended to contribute to the creation of a more democratic and less sectioned off campus community.

Amaury Sosa '07 and Jing Liu '07 moderated the event, guiding attending students, staff and faculty through a series of specific approaches for investigating sexual diversity and acceptance issues, a procedure designed at Franklin Pierce College and produced by the New England Center for Civic Life. It was the third in a series of student-organized deliberate dialogue forums sponsored by the Office for Institutional Diversity, following forums on ethnicity and race in February during Black History Month and on gender in March during Women's History Month. Students including Sosa and Liu, as well as attendee Matty Van Meter '07, were trained by the Vermont Campus Compact as moderators to conduct these deliberate dialogue sessions.

The event began with a brief discussion of the purpose of public deliberation - pooling various opinions and beliefs in a civil manner, to make decisions about beneficial public action through informed consequence and benefit analysis. This goal set the tone for what became an often difficult search for common ground among forum participants. The moderators conducted the discussion by eliciting responses to three proposed approaches to dealing with issues within the sphere of sexual public policy - guaranteeing legal rights for persons of various sexual orientations, recognizing heterosexuality as society's norm and creating a culture that values all kinds of sexual orientations in a way that transcends legal decisions.

In-depth debate of the issues resulted in some degree of consensus regarding these different approaches. Participants concluded that an innate sexual orientation is predetermined in every person, that social education and legal action accepting various sexual practices should be encouraged and that although homosexuality is not the norm, it is nevertheless unjustified as a reason for discrimination.

Most participants left the forum in agreement that legal changes regarding sexual practices can and will result in increased recognition, awareness and understanding. It was proposed that while our country, compared to many other countries, especially those in Western Europe, is hesitant to address issues regarding hetero- or homosexual practices, historical precedents have been set by both civil rights and women's rights movements to suggest that policy changes will in themselves increase acceptance. Additionally, forwarding such awareness on social and cultural levels can also help to reduce discrimination against those of various sexual orientations.

Several attendees, including recent graduate Nate Marcus '04.5, expressed their wish that the forum had included a broader scope of participants to add to the differing opinions and groups represented on the Middlebury campus. Despite the relatively small number of 10 participants, however, Dean for Institutional Diversity Roman Graf felt that the forum was a success. "The hope is that [these forums] will allow for diverse opinions to be voiced, heard and deliberated in an academic setting," he said. "We as a community do not get together enough to hear from each other and find out about each other's beliefs," he said.