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Roan, Alex, Paige Ravenscraft

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Alex Roan is a 42 year old trans masc individual who uses he/him pronouns. He was originally from Stoughton, Massachusetts where he grew up with his family before moving to Central Maine for college and living in the Portland area through adulthood. Alex shares his experience with growing up in a Catholic family and finding himself as a trans person in college. He details what it was like to come out to his family, who was in denial at first but later in life became his biggest supporters.

Alex Roan is the founder of MaineTransNet. This interview captures the story …

Michaud, Jim, Angelli Bishop

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Jim Michaud, (he/him), was born in 1964. Jim is a local Mainer, born and raised in Lewiston, Maine. He was born into a middle-class family with his siblings, was raised Catholic, and even attended Catholic school in his earlier years. Since the late eighties, Jim has identified as a gay man. He is a USM alumnus and attended the USM Gay Men's Alliance, which was his first ever encounter participating in an LGBTQ-organized environment. Being proactive in his political activism, Jim annually attends the Pride Parades in Boston, New York, and Maine. He stresses the importance of creating open space …

Exploring Interfaith Sex Education, Bailey Lewis

Honors College

Sacred Sexuality explores the intersections of religion and sexuality. I worked with Dr. Birthisel, Director of the Wilson Center, and Kate Dawson, co-facilitator of the sex education class, to survey the sex education class participants on how the experience has been for them. I surveyed the sex education class participants after the class to analyze their opinions of the sex education class, interfaith dialogue, and how their spirituality or religious perspectives inform their beliefs around sexuality. Overall, the sex education class was highly recommended and gave an interesting look into how faith and sexuality interact. While the sex education class …

Geist, Dale, Abby Milewski

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Ever since his coming out in a Facebook post, Dale Geist has championed queer representation in one of the most conservative music genres. Country. He is the founder of the online blog called Country Queer, where his goal is to shine a light on LGBTQ+ country and Americana music artists. He talks about influential artists such as Bob Dylan, The Indigo Girls, Elton John, Brandie Carlile, and David Bowie. In this 50-minute interview, Geist covers many stories from his life, including discovering his sexuality, the importance of media representation, David Bowie’s positive influence on the bisexual community, and the cultural …

Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Adults’ Experiences With Supportive Religious Groups, Rachel Grossman

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This qualitative research study was designed to explore lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) young adults’ views about how being a member of supportive and affirming religious places of worship and social groups influenced their self-acceptance, as well as their ability to integrate their religious and sexual minority identities. In this study, six in-person interviews were completed with participants who (a) were 18-24 years old; (b) identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual; (c) were members of supportive Jewish and Christian religious groups; and (d) identified as cisgender. The data from the interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis to tell cohesive stories …

Pezet, Antoinette, Emily Durgin

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Antoinette Pezet was born in New York April 23, 1937 as William Anthony Pezet. She recognized she was bisexual in her early teens. Her family was accepting of her sexuality very early on. Before enlisted in the military in her early twenties, she married her first wife, Helga. Due to mental health issues, Helga and Antoinette divorced. Antoinette then married her second wife, Emily, and went on to have two children.

It was not until Antoinette was divorced from Emily that she started dressing as a woman. In her early fifties she had a conversation with Jean Vermette that first …

Roosevelt, Boy Scouts, And The Formation Of Muscular Christian Character, Gordon J. Christen

Religious Studies Honors Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many prominent Christians and political leaders saw a degenerative influence in industrializing America. For them, urban culture had eroded gender roles, personal strength, and moral fiber. So-called “Muscular Christians” prescribed physical exertion and wilderness experience to cure these ills. I argue that these values were embodied in idealized characters such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jesus, and the Boy Scout to give a form to cultural remedies. In the process, they became the terms upon which proper Americanism, and proper Christianity, were constructed.

The Sociology Of Harriet Martineau In Eastern Life, Present And Past: The Foundations Of The Islamic Sociology Of Religion, Deborah A. Ruigh

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This paper is a critical analysis of Harriet Martineau’s philosophical stance and epistemological modes, her systematic sociological methodology, her use of this methodology, and her sociology of religion. How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), and other relevant works will be used to examine Martineau’s evolving epistemological modes as well as her sociology of religion. How to Observe, Martineau’s treatise on systematic sociological methodology and cultural relativism, will serve as an exemplar for analysis of Martineau’s methodological practice as evidenced in Eastern Life. The research problem herein is three-fold: (1) to examine …

Liberating Visions: Religion And The Challenge Of Change In Maine,1820 To The Present, University Of Southern Maine, Susie Boch, Joseph S. Wood, Maureen Elgersman Lee, Howard M. Solomon, Abraham J. Peck

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine, 1820 to the Present. Each of the Sampson Center’s three scholars has crafted an original essay related to one of the Sampson Center collections—African-American, Judaic, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender—thereby reflecting on how religious institutions have fostered minority identity and have framed social and cultural transformation.

Table of Contents:

Religion and Transformation (Joseph S. Wood, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs)

Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine Programming (Susie Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections)

The African American …