The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media (19 page)

different hierarchical power structures and pitting them against one another, journalists and editors produce binary divides that unwittingly marginalize activists seeking social reforms. In his canonical work on the antiwar movement in the 1960s, sociologist Todd Gitlin (1980) demonstrated how notions of journalistic “objectivity” often resulted in imbalanced sound bites—one from a rational-sounding, clean-cut authority figure and one from a dishev-eled, crazed-looking student “radical.” In this way the news media recognize s

the alternative viewpoints of social movement actors but at the same time n

further marginalize and ridicule them.

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Likewise, Alwood (1996) shows that the journalistic practice of objective reporting demands that reporters seek information from “verifiable” sources—

“information from politicians, police, clergy, psychiatrists—historical y society’s most forceful antigay detractors” (p. 10). Lisa Bennet (2000) argues that coverage of gay and lesbian issues in the news media has been plagued by a

“profound imbalance in the power and prestige of sources quoted” (p. 35).

Her analysis of
Time
and
Newsweek
, spanning over 50 years of coverage of gay issues, found that reporters tended to accept at face value the opinions of traditional sources of power, including religious leaders, government officials, politicians, and celebrities. Reporters have historical y been reluctant to question authoritative sources, ask for supporting evidence, or offer competing viewpoints. As Alwood (1996) writes, the journalistic strive for “balance” on controversial gay rights issues has only given “anti-gay fanatics a platform from which to profound their bigotry under the guise of providing ‘the other side’

. . . Although it would be unthinkable for journalists to interview a Ku Klux Klan member or a neo-Nazi for stories about African Americans or Jews—or to interview a misogynist for a story on women’s rights—the media think

nothing of routinely including demeaning and hateful remarks from bigots and antigay zealots in stories about gay rights” (p. 323).

In gay marriage stories, these same sourcing patterns persist, generally pitting anonymous same-sex couples and gay rights activists against col ared religious figures and powerful political figures. Quantitative analysis of the sources cited in television news reports during this time frame found that while gay and lesbian couples and gay rights activists made up 16.8 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively, of the sources cited, political figures (27.4 percent), conservative activists (13.4 percent), religious and legal figures (8.3

percent), and the president and his spokespersons (10.6 percent) overshadowed gay perspectives (see table).

In positioning gay and lesbian couples against traditional sources of power and authority such as the president, congressmen, and respected religious leaders, the news media unwittingly created an uneven playing field in which gay perspectives were unable to compete in public discourse. As one example, the introductory segment of the July 13, 2004, episode of
Nightline
represented two conflicting sides of the debate in a way that was emblematic of overall coverage. The segment featured unidentified gay couples speaking about how much marriage means to them in contrast with state authorities like Senator Rick Santorum, who addressed Congress in a suit and tie, and argued

passionately, “If you really care about preserving one man, one woman in a s

union called marriage, there is one sure-fire certain way to do it, and that is n

to vote for a constitutional amendment that does it” (Sievers, 2004, July 13).

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Sources cited in television news stories about gay marriage, 2003–2004, with mean length of sound bite, in seconds.

Source Identity

%

N

Mean

SD

Political figure

27.4

90

7.98

4.66

Gay/lesbian couple

16.8

55

8.75

7.26

Conservative activist

13.4

44

10.14

7.61

President George W. Bush

8.5

28

9.07

6.48

Gay rights activist

8.2

27

9.44

5.03

Academic/legal/political analyst

7.6

25

10.84

3.58

Legal figure

4.3

14

8.93

5.92

Religious figure

4.0

13

9.54

5.09

Vox pop

3.0

10

4.60

1.96

White House representative

2.1

7

7.29

1.98

Other/undetermined

1.8 6 7.00 2.45

Gay ally

1.5

5

34.50

36.57

Uncoupled gay or lesbian citizen

0.6

2

6.00

.00

Journalist/reporter

0.6 2 7.00 2.83

Total

100 328 9.16 7.68

Note: “
N
” stands for the raw number of sources, “
Mean
” represents the average length of sound bite, in seconds, and “
SD
” represents the standard deviation, or how much variation existed from the mean value. The “gay ally” mean value of 34.50 seconds was largely skewed by one particular news story in which the grown 20-something daughter of a gay couple was granted over a minute and a half of speaking time (hence the high standard deviation as well). This source had just written a book about her experience growing up in a household with two (gay) fathers.

Reflecting this imbalance of power,
Nightline
continued by identifying the leader of the national movement against same-sex marriage, the key opponent of gay couples seeking marriage rights, as the president of the United States.

Sound bites from the president solemnly addressing Congress or the American public were juxtaposed with celebratory images of couples’ ceremonies.

In 2004 and 2005 political and legal figures were rarely shown in support of equal marriage rights for gay couples, with the exception of openly gay Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.

As chapter 5 highlights, coverage evolved in 2008–2010 as the proportion of politicians speaking on behalf of same-sex-marriage rights grew substantial y, representing a maturation of the issue in political discourse.

Gay marriage opponents who were selected by reporters and editors to

voice their opinions in the news—including religious leaders, conservative activists, and politicians—equated gay marriage with social disorder, pedophilia, and polygamy, painting an apocalyptic picture of a modern-day

Sodom and Gomorrah. President George W. Bush, the most cited same-

sex-marriage opponent at the time, argued in a sound bite repeated across s

several news texts, “The union of a man and woman is the most enduring

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human institution . . . honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith” (Sievers, 2003, July 2). Several opponents rooted in the fundamentalist Christian faith, like Randy Thomasson of the Campaign for California Families, invoked the rhetoric of a slippery slope, commonly used by the conservative right, and argued that it would be dangerous to create a society in which you could marry whomever you love. Thomasson painted

a fear-provoking picture of a future America in which “children could be marrying older men, the number of partners could number three or four in a marriage” (Sievers, 2004, July 13).

Citing scripture and drawing from biblical references was also a routine strategy used by opponents to define gay marriage as incompatible with the norms of traditional marriage. Rev. Eugene Rivers, in his
Nightline
appearance, quoted the gospel, saying God intended man and woman to “cleave together” to raise a family. Linking marriage to procreation, thus solidifying the relationship between legal partnering and parenting, was a rhetorical device that religious figures commonly employed to define the cultural meaning and purpose of

marriage. As Reverend Rivers argued, marriage is essential “for the proper rearing of children,” stating that to have anything less than two parents—a mother and a father—is categorical y unfair to kids (Sievers, 2004, July 13).

A common fear of social conservatives, and an argument often used in news discourse, is that equal marriage will al ow gay couples to claim adoption rights as well as opportunities to produce their own children through reproductive technologies. The presupposition that marriage will
lead
to parenting, of course, denies the multiple and far more common ways families are structured in the United States today, including heterosexual married couples who choose not to have children, single parents raising children on their own, and of course heterosexual and same-sex couples who choose to raise children without getting married, just to name a few.

This rhetorical strategy that anchors marriage to child-rearing (and vice versa) also ignores the existence of the hundreds of thousands of children
already
living in gay households, those children who are not afforded the same financial protections as heterosexual married households. According to the 2010 census, on average, one-quarter of same-sex households included children under 18, totaling 115,000 out of the 594,000 same-sex-couple households who reported. Nearly half of U.S. adoption agencies report that they have placed a child with a gay or lesbian couple (Coontz, 2005, p. 275). Koppel does not challenge Rev. Rivers on the issue of raising children, nor does he refer to any of these statistics about the number of children who were s

living in gay households at the time. His silence on the subject once again n

fails to address one of the most significant issues left out of the debate: how l

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to ensure that children growing up in same-sex-partner households, unmarried households, and single-parent households receive financial protections and health care coverage that are equal to those of children growing up in mixed-sex-married households.

Marriage equality activists were acutely aware of the potential pitfalls of being selected as a source in a news story, especially in talk-show-style debates. In their critique of media coverage, several of my interviewees described falling prey to the “media fallacy” of journalistic objectivity. They discussed what they saw as a structural problem in the news when, in fol owing the path of least resistance, journalists constructed a two-sided debate in which the “gay voice” was almost always on the losing side. The routine media practice of constructing an “objective” binary often resulted in stag-ing a point-counterpoint debate between a gay rights spokesperson and a

religious leader, granting equal time to both sides. Several informants had experienced firsthand being thrown into a ring where they were sure to be the loser. Cheryl, then president of the Human Rights Campaign, described this common scenario.

CNN calls. The Reverend Jerry Falwell is coming on to talk about the fact that gay people are bad and God doesn’t support them. Will you come answer it?

Will you counter it, Cheryl, gay rights activist for the leading gay rights organization? And I’d go and we’d do it. Then I started saying, this isn’t right. America is loading their dishwasher and they’re watching a reverend, a theologian, a biblical person (he’s not really) talk about God and the Bible, and the counter isn’t, you know, Bishop Gene Robinson or Rabbi David Saperstein or Priest John Blow or Minister Kevin Jones. It’s gay rights activist Cheryl Jacques? Like, hello! I’m losing that the moment I walk in the door.

Further tipping the debate, reporters also tended to accept those oppo-

sitional sources of power at face value, leaving their claims unquestioned.

In one example, Cheryl described her frustration when journalists would

allow opposing sources like religious figures to tell what were, in her view, unsupported “blatant lies” and not calling them on it. Religious spokespeople like Jerry Falwell and Tony Perkins would say on television that instead of fighting for marriage equality, gay couples should simply recreate the benefits and protections of marriage by hiring a good lawyer. However, not only is that kind of legal representation inaccessible to most couples, but as Cheryl said, there is no lawyer who has the power to rewrite federal tax policy and secure social security survivor benefits to an unwed partner. Claims like this often went undisputed by reporters, inaccurately portraying the push for s

marriage equality as unsubstantiated and unnecessary.

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Religious figures were also common sources in news stories, always opposing gay rights and often questioning the very legitimacy of gay and lesbian people. For example, in the previously cited July 13, 2004,
Nightline
episode, Rev. Rivers of the Massachusetts Pentecostal Church used biblical and normative arguments to claim that redefining marriage for gay couples would personally threaten his heterosexual marriage. He argued further that the core feature of civilization is the joining together of a man and woman and that allowing same-sex couples to form unions and have families is dangerous for society.

Constructing the debate in this way led to a deeply rooted pattern that

positioned gay and lesbian couples in direct opposition to religious values and “morals,” ultimately relying on a simplistic but inaccurate framing device,