Both sides of the debate about gay marriage are extremely vocal in their support or opposition of this topic, so it’s difficult to get any unbiased opinion or data supporting either side.

So I decided to conduct my own quick, simple, unscientific study.

I examined some data that easily identifies people in Maine, their sexual orientation and personal motivation. Not only that, but the data were not provided about the topic of gay marriage. I went to Maine’s Craigslist personal ads.

Here is what I found:

I looked at “Women Seeking Women,” “Women Seeking Men,” “Men Seeking Men” and “Men Seeking Women” advertisements. In all, there were 1,169 gay ads and 1,025 straight ads.

In the gay ads, the terms “LTR” and “Long Term Relationship” were found in 27 ads, 2.2 percent of the total ads listed. For the straight ads, ads containing either of these terms totaled 114 ads, 11.2 percent.

Next, I went through each ad that had a photograph. For the gay ads, 196 ads had pictures, compared to 209 photos for the straight ads. Out of these ads, 105 out of 196 (53.6 percent) in the gay category were sexually explicit, compared to three explicit images out of 209 (1.4 percent) within the straight category.

People can make any conclusion they wish from this unscientific study. They can even dismiss this data as meaningless. To me, however, this data from people seeking relationships suggest that gays are less interested in long-term relationships than are straight individuals.

For the record, I do not support gay marriage.

Leigh Gagnon

Augusta