The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media (17 page)

who settle down and get married” (p. 349).

Indeed, these discourses surrounding identity politics and gay marriage

specifically work to produce new forms of gay desire. As Walters (2001b) argues, one is not born with the innate yearning to partner in a state-sanctioned, monogamous, child-rearing relationship; these desires are part of a norm that multiple institutions of power construct and (re)produce. Enforcing this new
gay
desire to marry,
60 Minutes’
Bob Simon was seen in one segment running around the streets of the Castro, shoving a microphone in the faces of gay couples, asking about their intention to get married. Soliciting the opinions of one middle-age Caucasian male couple, Simon asks, “Are you

guys going to get married?” Smiling, but clearly embarrassed and hesitant, one partner answered, “Hopefully he’ll ask me sometime this year” (Hewitt, 2004, March 10). Ambivalence about marriage was transformed into the

desire to marry. As one lesbian partner explained to the
New York Times,
economic pressures ultimately led her and her partner to marry. “The hard part is [that] the freedom to marry has become the pressure to marry has become the coercion to marry” (Belluck, 2004b, p. A19).

This coercion to marry is especially ironic and troubling considering how marriage is constructed as primarily a
female
desire. As the May 8, 2005, cover of the
New York Times
Sunday Styles section proclaims, “Even in gay circles, the woman wants the ring” (Bellafante, 2005). Of the first 5,400 couples wed in Massachusetts, the article reports, two-thirds have been lesbian couples. Why is the propulsion to wed largely a female desire? The article, citing sociologists and census statistics, argues that lesbian couples are more economically vulnerable, more likely to have children, and more likely to be susceptible to conformist cultural forces that promote marriage. As the pull quote on the inside page says, “Little girl dreams are the same, whether there’s a man or a woman standing at the altar.”

The fact that news discourses foreground lesbians as desiring of marriage, and that statistics bear out this pattern, ironically overlooks the problematic relationship between lesbianism and marriage’s historic subordination of women—an institution “irrevocably mired in inequality and male domi-s

nance” (Walters, 2001b, p. 349). Interrupting the steady stream of hegemonic nl

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chapter three

discourses, one article acknowledged the institution’s problematic history.

For one lesbian who was cited, deciding to marry was “a journey” to discover if she really wanted to be part of “an institution that comes out of a culture of ages-ago property exchange” (Belluck, 2004b, p. A19). Problematically, as chapter 4 details, these dominant media representations that promoted gay marriage as a female, suburban, and middle- to upper-class desire also largely excluded gays and lesbians of color, the poor, and the disenfranchised, those who would benefit the most from the institution’s benefits and protections.

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4. Gay Marriage Goes Prime-Time

Journalistic Norms Frame the Debate

At the end of the day, I understand some of the pressure that is

on the news media. “If it bleeds it leads.” Sensationalism versus

substance. They’re worried about ratings. They’re worried about

market share. They’re worried about their publisher being happy.

And the gay rights issue is no different from any other issue that

falls victim to that. If they can write it sensational, they will.

—Cheryl, former president of the Human Rights Campaign

The July 13, 2003, edition of ABC’s
Nightline
opened with what was considered a “shocking” image for prime-time news audiences at that time: a middle-age lesbian couple engaged in an open-mouth kiss during their wedding

ceremony (Morris & Sloop, 2006; Sievers, 2004, July 13). The voice of one partner is dubbed over the video: “With this kiss, I thee wed.” The image is immediately contrasted with a sound bite from a protester outside city hall shouting in anger, “What two men do when they get together, what two

women do when they get together, is perverting the human body!” The next image is of a gay rights activist holding what appears to be an American flag, but rather than the traditional red and white stripes, this flag displays stripes of all colors of the rainbow. The activist is flanked on all sides by a half dozen police officers, thus signifying his threat to the social order and communicating the need for state authorities to preside over the gay nuptials taking place.

In the next shot another couple is shown, this time a middle-aged male

couple at their wedding ceremony, reciting the traditional ceremonial language. This quiet, peaceful scene is followed by salacious images of protester aggression, filmed in the chaotic, eyewitness style of the television show
Cops
. The shaking camera and tense, close body posture of protesters gives s

the viewer the feeling that a physical fight is about to break out. As anti-gay n

protesters hold up homophobic signage, one gay activist shouts in anger, “You l

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chapter four

don’t know about love!” These fast-paced images, which, all told, account for only the first 15 seconds of this
Nightline
episode, juxtapose celebratory shots of newly married lesbian and gay couples with angry and sometimes

threatening demonstrations from conservative and religious protesters.

Despite attempts to “mainstream” gay marriage, as chapters 2 and 3 detail, activists in the marriage movement found themselves in many cases unable to disrupt what Edward Alwood (1996) refers to as the “long-standing anti-gay tone of the news media,” or “straight news.” Activists fell prey to the common pitfal s that have historical y plagued reporting of social movements: coverage that radicalizes activist participants, oversimplifies and sensationalizes the cause, relies on imbalanced sourcing in an attempt to construct a balanced debate, and shortcuts the fullness of the community being covered.

In this chapter I examine journalistic storytelling techniques such as labeling, framing, sourcing, imagery, and graphics that were used to produce the gay marriage issue for mainstream news audiences in 2003–2004. What

discursive strategies did mainstream news organizations employ to pro-

duce conflict in the news? How were labels and descriptive language used in news stories to validate historic homophobic discourses? How did privileging dominant political and religious sources work to dichotomize the debate and silence moderate perspectives? Final y, how did standard journalistic frames organize the marriage debate within “official” institutions of power?

This media analysis was informed by interviews with activists at the leading gay rights organizations whose job it was to shape coverage of gay and lesbian issues. This chapter not only reports on how the major national media organizations covered the gay marriage issue, but it also addresses how that coverage compared to the stated aims of activists on the front lines of the gay marriage debate. Embedded in their critique of press coverage are the chal enges these social actors faced in trying to filter their messages and images through a commercial media industry. My interviewees discussed how journalistic definitions of authority, expertise, and “balance” created an uneven playing field, often pitting gay and lesbian spokespersons against unequal sources of influence from legal, medical, religious, and political authorities.

The Gay Marriage Battlefield:

Producing Conflict in the News

Mass media scholars, sociologists, and political communication scholars alike have long shown how values of simplicity, conflict, drama, proximity, nov-s

elty, timeliness, and objectivity guide the journalistic production of issues and n

events. Those who study the production of news have not identified a con-l

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Gay Marriage Goes Prime-Time

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spiratorial, intentional bias on the part of reporters and editors. Rather, the demographic and ideological makeup of newsrooms and routine journalistic practices shape the content of news to privilege the powerful and maintain the status quo. As Todd Gitlin (1980) argues, “Simply doing their jobs, journalists tend to serve the political and economic elite definitions of reality” (p. 12).

There is nothing revelatory behind the notion that conflict drives news

coverage. Professional norms, commercial imperatives, organizational deadline pressures, and the quest for audience attention in an increasingly frag-mented media universe all drive reporters’ “fatal attraction to the two-sided conflict” (Jamieson & Cappella, 2000, p. 329). The consequences, however, can be dire—for policy issues, political campaigns, and social movements alike. Framing complex issues as simple two-sided conflicts, and focusing on the strategies of the political and social players rather than on substantive issues, often obfuscates coverage of political campaigns, public policy issues, and controversial social issues. For example, journalistic values of simplicity, conflict, and scandal overshadowed the complexities of health-care policies in the early 1990s, ultimately leading to the failure of reform (Jamieson & Cappella, 2000.)

In the case of the same-sex-marriage issue, news coverage centered almost exclusively on the battle between two extreme conflicting sides—typically religious-conservative opponent groups contrasted with gay rights activists or couples desiring to marry—which led to problematic framing (e.g., “God vs.

gays”). While the conflict frame provided a convenient and efficient narrative structure for journalists, it also cast participants into two fixed, opposing sides that silenced moderate perspectives. Furthermore, the disorder and chaos communicated through conflictual framing not only sensationalized the

gay marriage issue but also worked to ascribe delinquency to gay marriage activists who posed a “threat” to the social order.

Both the qualitative textual analysis of media content and the quantitative content analysis of network television news stories confirmed that conflict was the go-to framing device during this time period, consistent across print and broadcast outlets, and present in nearly 80 percent of television news stories.1 Specifically, three discursive strategies were central to the news production of conflict in same-sex-marriage stories: (1) reporters’ use of sensationalistic language, often echoing conservative perspectives in their use of labels and language; (2) specific editing techniques that showed a clash of gay marriage proponents and protesters, juxtaposing conflicting images of gay and lesbian ceremonies with protesters picketing and praying; and (3) the selection and use of sources, those political, religious, legal, or activist s

figures positioned on opposing sides of the mediated debate.

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chapter four

Sensationalistic Labels and Language

In chapter 3 I highlighted how couples, families, and visual symbols were used to construct gay marriage as symbolically
similar
to
heterosexual marriage. Paradoxically, the use of these visual symbols contradicted journalists’ linguistic framing of gay marriage as radically
different from
traditional marriage. In terms of news coverage, the gay marriage issue was still in its relative infancy during this time period, seen through the lens of novelty, an abstraction. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, reporters’ talk of gay marriage in the news often relied upon sensationalistic labels and language. In 68 percent of television news stories analyzed, reporters used language that played up conflict and dramatized the divisiveness of the issue. As one example, CBS

reporter Jim Axelrod proclaimed on the July 13, 2004, broadcast of the
CBS

Evening News,
“If you believe the polls, forget about abortion. Forget about gun control. The number one social issue this election year is gay marriage.

And Americans are clear on it: against the idea of gay marriage 2 to 1” (Hewitt, 2004, July 13).

Oftentimes, journalists unwittingly echoed conservative perspectives when they talked about gay marriage as indicative of an overall modern social up-heaval. For example, the introductory segment of the July 13, 2004,
Nightline
began with Ted Koppel solemnly telling his viewing audience, “Marriage in America is not just bouquets and champagne toasts anymore” (Sievers, 2004, July 13). In a similar vein, Barbara Walters’s story of Rosie O’Donnell and Kelly Carpenter O’Donnell used video footage of their same-sex ceremony

to contrast a traditional heterosexual ceremony, saying: “The bride didn’t wear white. She didn’t throw the bouquet. And the happy couple didn’t fly off for a romantic honeymoon. But they did steal headlines across the country”

(Sloan, 2005, April 8).

The March 10, 2004, edition of
60 Minutes
also defined gay marriage in terms of difference from the heterosexual institution when reporter Bob

Simon described a scene outside the San Francisco city hall, proclaiming,

“There are plenty of brides and plenty of grooms, but they don’t marry each other!” (Hewitt, 2004, March 10). Later in the program Simon defined gay marriage as a “sudden and radical change to the culture.” He also used linguistic markers to draw boundaries between those gays who want to marry

and those who do not and, thus by inference, choose to live outside the norm of American society.

During in-depth interviews I conducted, several activist informants dis-

s

cussed how the simple and oftentimes subtle terminology that reporters