The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media (7 page)

and 2010 in order to interrogate how activist strategies and discourses evolved over this time frame.

I selected my informants by first analyzing broadcast news stories about the gay marriage issue in order to determine those activists who were cited as spokespersons for the LGBT community. For my initial round of interviews that took place in 2005, I examined more than 100 transcripts of
NBC,
ABC,
and
CBS
nightly news broadcasts from 2003 and 2004, those stories included in my media content analysis (see chapter 3). I compiled a list of spokespersons who were housed within or attributed to gay rights organizations. Following Myra Marx Ferree and her colleagues’ (2002) definition of standing, these were spokespersons who were directly quoted, appeared on camera, and were able to offer their own interpretations and definitions of events rather than simply being covered as an object of news investigation.

Initial y I identified a total of 17 activists, representing 13 national gay rights s

organizations, who were cited, a number that struck me as smaller than I n

originally anticipated, considering the sheer number of news stories. The l

pool of “credible” gay rights spokespersons, as defined by mainstream news LC

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organizations, was relatively small, with the same names appearing time and again. Of these 17 cited, I was able to interview 11 informants, representing 6

major organizations, who were active in the marriage movement on a national level at that time—representatives from the Human Rights Campaign, the

Task Force, the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, Gay and

Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), Freedom to Marry, and the Log

Cabin Republicans (see the appendix for a more detailed description of the interview process). From October 2005 through January 2006, I traveled to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Oakland, California, to interview activists in person.

For comparative purposes, I also interviewed one activist during this

time frame who was based in Indianapolis, Indiana, near where I was living at the time. While all my other informants were located in large, urban, politically progressive cities of the East and West Coasts, I included this Indianapolis activist in my study in order to learn about the impact of the national media attention on a local gay rights organization in a politically conservative “red state.”

My interviewees worked often and intimately with news media person-

nel; they were public relations directors, communication strategists, and the presidents or founders of leading gay rights organizations. These social actors were in many ways the media elite of the gay rights movement and

the public face of the LGBT community—those who had a voice in the

mainstream media and were responsible for shaping news coverage of the

marriage issue. My respondents had a variety of media responsibilities,

including pitching news stories, writing and disseminating press releases, providing sources, shooting and distributing video footage (“b-roll”) of their community, conducting and publishing research on same-sex marriage, and developing media communication messages and strategies. They

also organized press conferences, held media training sessions, staged rallies and protests for press attention, helped design same-sex ceremonies as media events, and “prepped” couples for media appearances.

All of these informants had appeared in at least one (but more often multiple) national network news appearances in 2003 and 2004. Because this time period represents when the gay marriage controversy real y began to capture the public imagination, the following questions drove my analysis: How did these activists decide to foreground one goal—same-sex marriage—over

others? For those within the movement who had the power to shape the

commercial spaces that gays and lesbians inhabit, what were the predomi-

nant stories they tried to tell about gay and lesbian life? How did fighting the s

marriage battle in the arena of the mainstream news media reshape the aims n

and priorities of the organization? Addressing these questions, this chapter l

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chapter two

contributes to a rich body of scholarship that explores why social move-

ments come to rely on the news media to enter mainstream public debate,

the strategies they use, and the consequences they face in doing so.

As this chapter demonstrates, activists were overwhelmingly concerned

with how the increased media attention brought about by the controversial issue of same-sex marriage would define and shape the LGBT community.

Arlene of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, a regional group out of Boston that lobbies state legislators on behalf of gay and lesbian issues, described the tension in the movement over pursuing media strategies.

“I was always very insistent that we should never seek media for the sake of media. You seek it for a purpose. Which is a controversial subject within our community because there are some people who believe that media is good

no matter what. ‘As long as we’re there telling our story, it’s a good thing.’

Well, it might or might not be. Is it reminding them of something we want them to forget?”

As evident in Arlene’s comment, the movement remained cautious about

stepping into the spotlight—concerned about the messages media producers might send about the community, guarded against what kinds of negative

stereotypes might be reproduced. As subsequent interviews with gay and

lesbian rights leaders on the front lines of the marriage battle demonstrate, the media attention surrounding the marriage issue shone the spotlight on the LGBT community in such a way that it became impossible for activists to avoid interactions with a heterosexist mass media system.

Long before the news media began buzzing over same-sex marriage, the

issue itself, far from being a united and undisputed goal of the gay rights movement, was the center of an intra-community debate. In this chapter I first focus on how these social actors came to settle on the marriage equality issue, and how informants defined marriage not as a battle of choice but as one they were forced to contend with. I show how activists fought to “mainstream” gay marriage within the confines of a heteronormative news system, and how these tensions led to competing definitional strategies for talking about marriage in the press. To begin I contextualize these contemporary debates over messaging by discussing how the gay movement has historical y struggled about when—and how—to seek media publicity.

The U.S. Gay Movement and the Media in Perspective

In 2003 and 2004, when the battle over same-sex-marriage rights was heating s

up, the majority of the nation’s gay and lesbian rights groups were already n

employing moderate, assimilationist, equal-rights strategies for earning a spot l

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on the playing fields of media, culture, and politics. As Larry Gross summa-rized in 2001, the “organized sector of lesbian and gay America has embraced assimilation as the realization of their ultimate goal” (p. xvi). At that time the large and powerful gay organizations were headed by a partnered professional woman with children, thus “presenting the face of middle-class normality and respectability” (p. xvi).

Of course, the gay rights movement has not always relied upon assimi-

lationist strategies and goals. Social movements in the United States have historical y fluctuated between competing political logics (Armstrong, 2002; Bernstein, 1997; W. Gamson, 1998), what Mary Bernstein (1997) refers to as wrestling between the compulsion to celebrate difference, often in opposition to mainstream culture, and the impulse to suppress those differences in order to assimilate. Rather than simply following one route or the other, movements often oscillate between these political pathways, or even pursue both simultaneously.

As the gay and lesbian movement in the United States has experienced

these tensions, their goals and strategies for achieving social reform have changed accordingly. The post-Stonewall early liberation model, in which LGBT groups critiqued social norms and institutions, has eventually been replaced by an interest-group model that seeks equal rights (Armstrong,

2002; Bernstein, 1997; W. Gamson, 1998). Armstrong (2002) traces how the gay liberation movement (1969–1970) that grew out of the New Left fol owed a redistributive politics that relied on a critique of capitalism and took the position that “sexual liberation was only a part of a larger movement seeking economic, racial, and gender justice” (p. 57). This arm of the gay movement was utterly at odds with the single-issue, rights-oriented politics of the homophile movement in the late 1960s. Gay rights groups began to model

themselves after interest group logics and worked within existing political institutions to extend rights to the LGBT community, as opposed to critiquing mainstream institutions as “futile and contaminating” (Armstrong, 2002, p. 77). The movement that once largely stood for cultural transformation through sexual revolution is now one that seeks to achieve political rights through single-issue, interest group strategies. As Bernstein (1997) argues,

“The lesbian and gay movement seems largely to have abandoned its emphasis on difference from the straight majority in favor of a moderate politics that highlights similarities” (p. 531).

These competing impulses continue to shape the movement today (Epstein,

1996; W. Gamson, 1998). On the one hand, the predominant
ethnic/essentialist
logic
of the gay and lesbian movement argues that identity is a fixed, natural s

essence and depends upon collective action for political gain. In this model nl

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chapter two

LGBT communities take on the form of a “quasi-ethnicity” with their own

neighborhoods, parades, and festivals. On the other hand, this essentialist logic is opposed to “queer activism” that seeks to break apart identity categories and blur group boundaries. Under this
deconstructionist political
logic
one can be liberated only by resisting the “minority” label (W. Gamson, 1998). Scholars have argued that rather than hindering the movement, the existence of both logics has been key to its survival, one that celebrates both diversity and unity (Armstrong, 2002; Bernstein, 1997; W. Gamson 1998).

Paradoxically, in the game of identity politics, social categorization is both the means of empowerment and the source of oppression (W. Gamson, 1998).

These political logics play an important role in whether or not social movements seek media attention, their strategies for doing so, and how successful they are in achieving a voice in public discourse. Social movements are often plagued by what William Carroll and Robert Ratner (1999) refer to as an “asymmetrical dependency” on the mass media (p. 26). As Todd Gitlin

(1980) argues in
The Whole World Is Watching
, beginning in the twentieth century, social movement actors came to realize their “need” for mainstream mass communications in order to matter. Often groups attempting to reform society rely on media publicity to attract and mobilize group members, bring their issue(s) into the realm of public debate, assert their voice in a preexisting debate, educate the public about their cause, and influence policy decision makers. This dependency on the media may be even more extreme for groups who lack direct access to traditional political structures (such as the courts and the legislature), often the case with movements that define themselves in opposition to social institutions. For these actors who don’t have a seat at the political table, the media may be the only route—albeit an indirect one—to social change.

The gay and lesbian movement in the United States has relied upon me-

dia attention in varying ways throughout its development. As with other

movements, the media contributed to the gay movement in its infancy

by helping to create its collective identity—by attracting, organizing, and mobilizing members and by providing a space in which to define itself.

Simply appearing in and being labeled by the media affords groups the

opportunity to become part of the political and cultural scene. In a movement’s formative years, the news media can be
constitutive,
defining and establishing the movement not only for the public but for the group’s current and potential members as well (Armstrong, 2002). In this way, too,

backlash from opposition groups can grant visibility and raise awareness s

for social and identity movements. For example, in 1977 celebrity singer nl

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Anita Bryant launched the hateful “Save the Children” campaign in Mi-

ami, Florida, one of the first political coalition groups organized against the gay rights movement. Bryant’s campaign successfully overturned an

equal rights ordinance that would have protected gays and lesbians from

discrimination in housing and employment opportunities, on the grounds

that the law would prohibit schools from teaching morality. Bryant’s antigay crusade won, as 70 percent of Dade County voters voted to repeal the ordinance. However, the increased press attention surrounding the controversy ultimately contributed to the growth of the gay identity movement.

“By recognizing and publicizing gay identity, Bryant participated in creating her enemy. In cultural struggles like this one, all press is, in a sense, good press. By generating media coverage the backlash further disseminated gay identity and the gay rights agenda” (Armstrong, 2002, p. 128).