The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media (18 page)

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radicalize and criminalize the activist community. Because news stories are derived from a heterosexist vantage point, the prejudicial language used to label gays and lesbians in the press is plentiful (Alwood, 1996). Several activists pointed out how even the predominant labels the news media used inaccurately framed gay marriage as a separate institution. One informant expressed the challenges of having to contend with the terminology that

echoed throughout media and popular discourse: “‘Gay marriage’ sort of

sets it apart and makes it sound like this is marriage that is different from the marriage that everyone else knows and understands. And that’s in fact the antithesis of the point. The whole point is it’s not different, it’s not special, it’s not a new institution. It’s giving same-sex couples access to marriage”

(Michael, Human Rights Campaign).

Activists sought to frame the issue using their preferred labels like “marriage equality,” “equal marriage rights,” or “marriage for same-sex couples” so that the public would understand that gay rights activists were not attempting to reinvent the institution, but simply working to expand existing marriage laws to include same-sex couples.

The propensity of sensationalizing language not only contributed to framing “gay marriage” as different from “real marriage,” but from the perspective of my activist informants it also made it difficult to move beyond the “hype”

and present the “deeper story” of gay and lesbian lives and families. Activist and former Massachusetts state senator Cheryl Jacques explained her

struggle of being branded in the press as an openly gay politician, unable to escape the discursive labeling that Lisa Bennet (2000) writes has historically stigmatized gays and lesbians.

I think some reporters are really in the dark ages. I remember when I was campaigning, and that’s awhile ago, but it still happens: “Jaques, an avowed lesbian.” “Jaques, an admitted lesbian.” And I would call the reporter and say,

“‘An admitted lesbian’? Are you ‘an admitted straight person’? Will you look at those words? It sounds like I’m an alcoholic or an admitted tax felon. Or ‘an avowed lesbian.’ Do you take a vow to be straight? . . . That makes me sound radical or militant. I’m just who I am, guys, and I’m just being truthful about it. I didn’t take a vow!”

For many of my activist informants, the media frenzy that worked to

sensationalize gay marriage as a hot-button issue that would sell more newspapers and drive ratings also took attention away from their work on other causes. As an out-lesbian political figure, Jacques faced difficulties in receiving press attention on any issue other than gay marriage. The conflict sur-s

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shift press attention to a host of other important issues she represented, reducing her work in the legislature and her entire campaign to a single cause. She complained of newspaper coverage the morning after a campaign debate: “I would see headlines: ‘Jacques: Pro Gay Marriage.’ And that was some sort of tiny little thing we had talked about in a whole discussion about economic policy and education policy and health care . . . And I’d think, here we go again. As if all I care about is gay marriage, when I spent two hours talking about everything else and one minute talking about gay rights.

The editor knew that would make people read the article or would kind of jazz everybody up.”

Frustrated by the sensational coverage, these informants who worked with the news media uniformly argued that their greatest hurdle was in packaging their story and their message in a condensed form that was fit for a highly competitive and commercialized media system. Referring to the waning

attention span of American news audiences, one activist bemoaned, “We’re a
USA Today
culture, not an NPR culture” (Chris, Log Cabin Republicans).

Americans want their news packaged in fast, simple, consumable, bite-size portions, burdening social actors to tell their side of the story in the form of

“a neat little sound bite.” One activist explained the chal enge of communicating a complex issue like gay marriage, in particular for condensed television news debates, in this way:

It is really easy for our opponents to say, “We need to preserve traditional marriage. Marriage is good for our family. Every child should have a mother and a father.” Even I hear that and I go, yeah, that’s not a bad message. But we have to tell the deeper story. “Okay, not every child has a mother and a father . . .

Not every father and mother are good parents. What kids really need is love and attention and nurture. And the ideal household is two loving, committed parents and the resources to raise that child.” That’s a hard message. It doesn’t fit in a sound bite. (Cheryl, former president of the Human Rights Campaign) Several other informants gave examples of the “deeper story” that they

struggled to tel , one that the news media failed to cover. One activist referred to the coverage of the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) as “woefully

insufficient,” failing to report that under this new law, gays and lesbians would be excluded not only from marriage but from civil unions as well. He saw it as hypocritical that after calling for the passage of the amendment, President George W. Bush would go on morning talk shows and say he supported civil unions, touting his minimal tolerance for gay and lesbian relationships as s

his compromise position. Reporters failed to investigate the full reach of the n

FMA or to bring out the inconsistencies in the president’s position.

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Dueling Visuals Drive Conflict

Another way news organizations produced conflict was through the selec-

tion and juxtaposition of dueling images of activists, couples, and protesters.

Oftentimes, images of “traditional” heterosexual wedding ceremonies were contrasted with same-sex couples’ ceremonies to graphical y communicate

some sort of cultural shift brought about by gay marriage. For example, in the opening segment of the February 24, 2004,
Nightline
edition, viewers are presented with a black-and-white, cinematic-style image of a happy, young, heterosexual Caucasian couple kissing during what appears to be their marriage ceremony—she in a traditional lacy wedding gown, he in a black tuxedo (Sievers, 2004, February 24). The style of dress, hair, and filming has a 1950s look to it. As Ted Koppel narrates, “That was then, this is now,” a barrage of images flashes across a split screen. Moving black-and-white images of heterosexual wedding ceremonies appear on the left side, juxtaposed with color video images of same-sex couples embracing and kissing during their apparent ceremonies on the right. In an energetic style of visual narration, each image appears for only a split second. Dueling sound bites are dubbed over this fast-paced “kiss-off” between straight couples and gay couples: a lesbian partner talking about what their marriage means to her, contrasted with President Bush and Senator Rick Santorum calling for a constitutional amendment to protect the institution. Through Koppel’s narration, the use of fast-paced contrasting imagery, and the dubbed-in sound bites, the gay marriage issue is presented as dramatic, chaotic, and confusing, as if the terrain of marriage were undergoing seismic and violent shifts.

The fast-paced, same-sex-couple/angry-religious-protester dyad I de-

scribed at the beginning of this chapter was a common way to represent the issue not only in television news but in print media as wel . The inside spread of the
Newsweek
cover story that begs the question “Is gay marriage next?”

features similar dueling images. The dominant image is of two women—one

donning a traditional white wedding dress and veil, the other in a black tuxedo-like pantsuit—engaged in a passionate open-mouth kiss while onlooking supporters cheer and clap. The dueling image to the left is of an older white-haired man, holding a sign that reads, “Homosexuality, Hellfire, Sin,”

the words themselves graphically illustrated to appear as though they are on fire. In the foreground of the image, a blurred figure of a police officer once again subtly highlights the presence of state authority.

As a result, homophobic imagery and discriminatory language from

conservative groups were given a stage, positioned as credible opposing

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA: A member of the religious group Repent America

demonstrates against same-sex marriages in front of a queue of gay and lesbian couples on their way to get married at San Francisco City Hall on February 20, 2004. (Photo by Hector Mata/AFP/Getty Images)

contrasted with opponents holding anti-gay signage that cited biblical verses and referenced religious imagery (also fueling the “God vs. gays” framing discussed later in this chapter and in chapter 5). The March 10, 2004, episode of
60 Minutes
featured protester signage that read, “Homosexuality is Sin,”

“Stop Destroying the Family,” “This is Proof Homosexuals are Lawless,” and

“Adam & Eve not Adam & Steve” (Hewitt, 2004, March 10). Similarly, the July 13, 2004,
Nightline
featured signs proclaiming, “Homosexuals are possessed by demons,” and showed footage of protesters wearing T-shirts with the word

“homo” circled and crossed out with a bright red bar (Sievers, 2004, July 13).

In giving vitriolic rhetoric like this exposure on prime-time news pro-

grams, news producers publicize perspectives that criminalize and demonize homosexuality. As I argue in this next section, by selecting images and oppositional sources from religious conservatives on the far right, mainstream news organizations replayed historic homophobic stereotypes and provided a platform for extreme anti-gay discourses.

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Balance and Objectivity: Sourcing the Debate

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Who the news media select as sources and how their voices are presented

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has been the concern of a large body of scholarly research (see, for example, LC

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Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995; Gans, 1979; Grabe & Zhou, 1999; Graber, 1997; Just, Crigler & Buhr, 1999; Sigal, 1973). Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevitch (1995) assert that when reporters cover issues, they tend to seek out field-defined official sources who can give them an authoritative perspective. The result is that “alternative definitions of social issues are then disadvantaged—

either not represented at all, given short shrift, or labeled as ‘interested’ and

‘biased’” (p. 30). It has been widely recognized that white, male, heterosexual, government-based “elite” or “official” sources dominate both television and print media, leaving little space for the voices of ordinary citizens (Graber, 1997). This research has shown that more than half, and often as high as three-quarters, of all news sources cited are local, state, national, and international government officials (Gans, 1979; Grabe & Zhou, 1999; Sigal, 1973).

Journalists’ heavy reliance on the narrowly defined “authoritative” viewpoint leaves little room for the voices of average citizens or social movement leaders attempting to challenge the political agenda of elites.

When it comes to coverage of gay issues, these routine journalistic standards often dictate that gay and lesbian people are pitted against opposing

“official” sources from legal, medical, religious, and political authorities. Their lives are thus viewed through the lenses of psychiatrists, clergymen, and congressmen, but rarely from the perspective of their own community. This pattern emerged in the 1950s and ’60s when gay people routinely appeared on panels with psychiatrists describing homosexuality as a mental illness, and it continued through the 1990s with military officials explaining the rationale behind the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. In short, in the news, gay people have historical y “been the least important sources of information and opinion about their own lives” (Gross & Woods, 1999, p. 349).

In following standards of journalistic neutrality, reporters tend to seek out and give voice to the most dichotomous viewpoints on either side of

an issue. Scholars who study social and political movements have shown

how journalistic notions of objectivity, or presenting “both sides” of an issue as if there were only two viable alternatives to “choose” from, works to disadvantage social movement activists. By relying on sources from very