The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media - Brossura

Moscowitz, Leigh

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0252079604 ISBN 13: 9780252079603

Casa editrice: Univ of Illinois Pr, 2013

Riassunto

Over the past decade, the controversial issue of gay marriage has emerged as a primary battle in the culture wars and a definitive social issue of our time. The subject moved to the forefront of mainstream public debate in 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began authorizing same-sex marriage licenses, and it has remained in the forefront through three presidential campaigns and numerous state ballot initiatives. In this thorough analysis, Leigh Moscowitz examines how prominent news outlets presented this issue from 2003 to 2012, a time when intense news coverage focused unprecedented attention on gay and lesbian life.

 

During this time, LGBT rights leaders sought to harness the power of media to advocate for marriage equality and to reform their community's public image. Building on in-depth interviews with activists and a comprehensive, longitudinal study of news stories, Moscowitz investigates these leaders' aims and how their frames, tactics, and messages evolved over time. In the end, media coverage of the gay marriage debate both aided and undermined the cause. Media exposure gave activists a platform to discuss gay and lesbian families. But it also triggered an upsurge in opposing responses and pressured activists to depict gay life in a way calculated to appeal to heterosexual audiences. Ultimately, The Battle over Marriage reveals both the promises and the limitations of commercial media as a route to social change.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Leigh Moscowitz is an assistant professor of communication at the College of Charleston.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

The Battle over Marriage

Gay Rights Activism through the Media

By LEIGH MOSCOWITZ

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-252-07960-3

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix, 
1. Gay Marriage in an Era of Media Visibility, 1, 
2. Fighting the "Battle to Be Boring": Marriage as a Portal into the Mainstream, 25, 
3. "The Marrying Kind": The Face of Gay Marriage in the News, 53, 
4. Gay Marriage Goes Prime-Time: Journalistic Norms Frame the Debate, 77, 
5. Speaking Out: Representing Gay Perspectives in News Discourse, 99, 
6. Conclusion: The Trouble with Marriage, 125, 
Appendix: Studying Gay Marriage in the Media, 135, 
Notes, 149, 
References, 151, 
Index, 159, 

CHAPTER 1

Gay Marriage in an Era of Media Visibility

My marriage, it's my center. It's the core of who I am as a humanbeing. It's the base that you turn back to.

—Carol Adair, who married her lesbian partnerof 25 years in San Francisco in February 2004

There are millions of Americans angry and disgusted by what theysee on TV—two brides, two grooms, but not a man and a woman.This is the new civil war in America.

—Randy Thomasson, executive directorof the Campaign for California Families

For nearly a decade, longtime partners Davina Kotulski and Molly McKaycelebrated Valentine's Day by dressing up in traditional wedding garb: Davinain a tux, Molly in a white gown. They stood in line with hundreds of opposite-sexcouples at San Francisco's city hall to request a marriage license. Everyyear, they were denied one. As a committed lesbian couple and activists inthe movement for marriage equality, Davina and Molly rehearsed their annualfutile quest for a marriage license precisely so that they would be turneddown in front of local television news crews and newspaper photographers.With the goal of creating, as Davina put it, "a media stir," they came yearafter year to protest their exclusion to the institution of marriage, to "rendervisible the discrimination we face on a daily basis."

On February 16, 2004, Davina and Molly's desire for a state-sanctionedwedding was finally fulfilled. Capturing headlines around the globe, SanFrancisco mayor Gavin Newsom had begun issuing marriage licenses tosame-sex couples in defiance of California law. Approximately 1,400 gay andlesbian couples, many of whom had traveled hundreds of miles to wait in lineovernight in the cold rain, met in San Francisco to be a part of the media-dubbedsame-sex "marriage marathon." Millions of Americans who tunedin to national and local television news broadcasts witnessed somethingthey had not seen before, which for most was beyond their imagination: gayand lesbian couples getting married "legally"—at least what was consideredtemporarily legal. By the end of the week, more than 3,900 gay and lesbiancouples were married.

The matrimonial marathon that took place in San Francisco was one of themost visible moments in a series of legal and cultural events that catapultedthe issue of gay marriage to the center stage of mainstream cultural debate.In the 2000s same-sex marriage emerged not only as an important electionyear issue but also as a central battle waged in the culture wars. Homosexuals'bid for marriage rights quickly became a wedge issue, "one of the culturalfault lines dividing the two Americas" in what was already a contentiouspolitical climate (Rosenberg & Breslau, 2004, p. 23).

Moreover, the intense news coverage of the divisive issue in the U.S. mediafocused unprecedented attention on gay and lesbian life. Stories like those ofDavina and Molly were featured in national newsmagazines and on morningnews programs. The topic of gay marriage became a front-page storyin leading national newspapers like the Washington Post and the New YorkTimes. Local papers across the country, especially in conservative regions,gave the issue "dramatic play" (Jurkowitz, 2004, p. 1). Images of same-sexcouples waiting in line to obtain marriage licenses led the local and eveningnewscasts. Almost overnight, as USA Today reported, gay marriage replacedabortion as "the most volatile social issue" in the 2004 presidential election(Page, 2003). As lead anchor Tom Brokaw proclaimed to television news audienceson NBC Nightly News, "Never have the words 'I do' been so divisive"(Reiss, 2004, May 16).

Today, of course, these stories and images of same-sex nuptials are almostpassé. By 2013 thirteen states and the District of Columbia had legalized marriagefor same-sex couples, and think tanks and media outlets alike showeda sea-change in growing public support. In 2008 a Newsweek poll declareda "gay marriage surge," and surveys from the Pew Research Center showedthat by 2012 more American adults favored same-sex marriage (48 percent)than opposed it (43 percent) (Pew Forum, 2012). That figure represents a 17percent increase from 2004, when only 31 percent supported gay marriageand nearly twice as many Americans opposed it (Pew Research Center, 2012).

This shift in increasing public support for gay marriage is perhaps mostvisible in the arena of electoral politics. In 2004 the George W. Bush reelectioncampaign ran on, and many would argue won on, an anti–gay marriage platform.Eight years later, in a televised interview that attracted worldwide newsattention, President Barack Obama told ABC's Robin Roberts that same-sexmarriage should be legal. A mere four years earlier, support for gay marriageon the national stage was the equivalent of campaign suicide—a politicallyvolatile hot potato that no candidate wanted to touch. During the 2012 electionseason, however, gay marriage headlined at the Democratic National Convention,the first time ever that the issue of marriage equality was introduced ina major party platform. While pundits and strategists questioned the Obamacamp's motives during this election season, no one could ignore how the centerof gravity on the issue had shifted. As Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster,told the New York Times, "The majority of voters are comfortable with theposition Obama has taken on [same-sex marriage]. The issue is a definingone for younger voters, who see it as a litmus test of whether someone is insync with modern times and their generation" (Baker, 2012).

But on the issue of same-sex-marriage rights, contradictions abound.President Obama's personal proclamation for marriage equality came theday after voters in North Carolina—also the site of the Democratic NationalConvention—passed an initiative to ban same-sex marriages (even thoughgay marriage was already illegal in the state). Consistently, gay marriagemeasures have been defeated at the ballot box, losing in total 32 statewidereferenda that have gone up for public vote. It wasn't until November 2012that voters approved gay marriage rights through the electoral process, makingsame-sex marriages legal in Maryland, Maine, and Washington State.

To date, battles continue over the legality of California's Proposition 8("Prop 8"), which in 2008 outlawed same-sex marriages, a crushing defeatfor the gay rights movement. After a dizzying number of legal twists andturns, in August 2010 U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker struck downthe California voter initiative as unconstitutional, legalizing gay marriages inthe state once again. Prop 8 proponents appealed the decision, and the casenow awaits hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This book is concerned with the media coverage that helped to define andshape one of the most contentious social issues of the last decade, the same-sex-marriagedebate. Through an analysis of media reports and in-depthinterviews with leaders of the modern gay rights movement, The Battle overMarriage offers a critical and longitudinal examination of how media framesand activist discourses evolved surrounding this definitive civil rights issue.My focus is from 2003 to 2010, a period of intense media scrutiny, legalactivity, shifting public opinion, and evolving political discourses.

This study interrogates the aims and challenges of leading gay rights activistswho sought to harness the power of mainstream news media to "changehearts and minds"—to advocate for their cause and reform images of theircommunity. In doing so, I join an evolving academic and popular conversationabout how news coverage frames contemporary social issues and movements.This book also speaks to a growing body of work on the emergenceof gays and lesbians in the media and popular culture, using news narrativesand representations as a critical but under-studied source of informationabout gay and lesbian life.

Who was granted a voice in mainstream media debates on this controversialcivil rights issue? How did gay and lesbian rights groups attempt toshape coverage of the debate? What images and narratives about gay andlesbian life did activists foreground? What were the dominant journalisticdevices—including frames, sources, and visual images—that media storytellersrelied upon to produce this story for news audiences? And in what waysdid the media attention surrounding the marriage issue reshape the structure,organization, and goals of the contemporary gay rights movement? Theseare the central questions I am concerned with in this book. To investigatethese concerns, I conducted 30 in-depth interviews with the nation's leadinggay rights activists at two different time periods in this debate—in 2005 andagain in 2010—in order to reveal the behind-the-scenes goals, strategies,and struggles of social movement actors who worked within the confinesof commercial news media to "sell" gay marriage to a largely unreceptiveAmerican public. I also conducted qualitative and quantitative analyses ofa broad range of news media texts throughout this time period, includingprominent, large-circulation newsmagazines; national newspapers in printand online; national network television news broadcasts; and prime-timetelevision news programs. Ultimately this project shows the complex waysthat media coverage of the gay marriage debate both aided and underminedthe cause, revealing both the progressive potential and the limitations ofcommercial media as a route to social change.

* * *

Before I identify the major intellectual frameworks for the study of gaymarriage in the news and why they matter, I want to return to the story ofMolly and Davina. For them, a couple who had celebrated their union in acommitment ceremony with family and friends six years earlier, the experienceof being "backed by the law" at San Francisco's city hall in 2004 wastransformative. Davina explained to me the cultural significance of marriageas society's "shorthand for who gets what and who is related to whom."

On that day in 2004, Molly and Davina also became national media spokespersons.The traditional act of sealing the ceremony with a passionate kisswas captured by videographers, newspaper photojournalists, and magazinephotographers. Molly and Davina's climactic kiss of conjugal bliss morphedinto an iconic symbol for the gay marriage movement, appearing in regionalnewspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle; in national publications likeNewsweek, Time, and USA Today; in two documentary films; and on severaltelevision news programs.

This couple's story points to the two central concerns of this book. First, Iam interested in how activists like Molly and Davina talk of marriage, a historicallyexclusionary institution, as a route to inclusive citizenship and culturalacceptance. The media landscape has been an important site of strugglefor challenging and (re)defining marriage, an institution imbued with culturalmeanings and social significance that are largely taken for granted. Definingmarriage in particular ways legitimizes some individuals and relationshipsby prohibiting others. Because marriage is irrevocably tied to citizenshipand nationhood, the gay marriage debate is not only about homosexuals'bid for marriage rights but also about how we define ourselves as a cultureand a nation. Narratives of gender, race, sexuality, nationhood, and familyare intertwined with news discourses about same-sex marriage.

Second, Molly and Davina's story highlights how the gay marriage debatebecame largely a mediated issue in public discourse—an issue we learn aboutand experience through newspapers, magazines, television news programs,and web stories. Coverage of same-sex marriage in mainstream news connectswith larger theoretical concerns about how social movements gainaccess to the media and the politics of media representations.

To understand the significance of stories like Molly and Davina's, and theprocess by which these stories become media spectacles, it is first necessary toposition media coverage of the gay marriage controversy within several largerintellectual frameworks in the fields of media studies and queer studies. Tobegin this discussion, I briefly outline the major legal and political developmentsin the United States that catapulted gay marriage onto the front pagesof prominent national newspapers and magazines. Next I highlight why thisstudy is important by connecting my work to the major bodies of scholarshipon the visibility of gay and lesbian people in the news and popular culture;the complicated interdependent relationship between social movements andmedia; and the role of marriage as a political and social institution. Finally,I briefly explain how I selected the news stories and activists for this study,and I outline the plan of the book.

Same-Sex Marriage: Legal and Political Contexts

The evolution of the gay marriage debate in the United States has manydifferent histories with multiple beginning points. In subsequent chapters Ireflect more on the origins of the debate, especially from the perspectives ofgay rights activists, some of whom have been fighting for marriage equalitysince the early 1980s. For my purposes here, I focus on the central eventsthat piqued the public interest beginning in the mid-1990s and culminatedin the explosion of media attention in the early to mid-2000s.

The fight for marriage equality in the United States has evolved on a state-by-statelevel, with early activity focused on Hawaii. A great deal of publicattention centered on the 1996 Hawaii court case in which it was ruled thatbanning same-sex couples from participating in marriage was unconstitutional.The lower court sent the controversial case back to the state's supremecourt. Fearing that Hawaii would become the first state to legalize same-sexunions, Congress passed a federal act in 1996 dubbed the Defense of MarriageAct (DOMA). Signed into law by President Bill Clinton, this act defined forthe first time on a federal level the term "marriage" as between one man andone woman and the term "spouse" as someone of the opposite sex. DOMAalso gave states the right to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performedin other states.

In 2000 the issue once again made headlines when Vermont became thefirst state to offer civil unions that legally recognize same-sex couples. Thesecivil union arrangements provide gay couples some, though not all, of therights and protections that marriage affords heterosexual couples. Vermont'sthen governor, Howard Dean, signed the civil union bill into law. These earlysteps in Hawaii and Vermont paved the way for the contemporary controversyover gay marriage in the 2000s, the time period that is the central concernof this study.

Beginning in the summer of 2003, a series of legal and political eventspushed gay marriage to the forefront of mainstream politics. In June 2003Ontario, Canada, legalized marriage for same-sex couples, opening the doorto thousands of Canadian couples, as well as American couples who crossedthe border, to marry without restrictions. That same month, the U.S. SupremeCourt ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that all 13 remaining state sodomy laws wereunconstitutional. Considered a landmark case for gay civil rights, conservativejudges and activists warned that the ruling would open the door to thelegalization of same-sex marriage (see chapter 3 for a discussion of this case).

At the state level, gay rights activists and same-sex couples who wantedto marry legally challenged state-level DOMA legislation. Activists arguedthat to deny gays and lesbians marriage rights under the law was discriminatoryand unconstitutional. In November 2003 the Massachusetts SupremeJudicial Court ruled on behalf of seven plaintiff couples in Goodridge et al.v. Department of Public Health, arguing that the state constitution mandatesthat same-sex couples should have access to civil marriage. Three monthslater, in February 2004, the Massachusetts court clarified its earlier decisionin Goodridge and ruled that anything less than marriage—including civilunion arrangements—fails to provide equal protections for same-sex couplesand is therefore unconstitutional under the law.

That same month, as detailed earlier in this chapter, San Francisco mayorGavin Newsom defied California law and issued same-sex marriage licenses tomore than 3,900 gay and lesbian couples. Newsom told Nightline's Ted Koppelthat his motivation to issue the licenses was to end what he saw was a discriminatorypractice in the state of California, and also in part as a retaliatoryresponse to the Bush administration's political agenda. As he explained onNightline, Newsom was emphatic that buried in the president's 2004 State ofthe Union Address was a thinly disguised attempt to amend the Constitutionin order to ban same-sex marriages. "It was crystal clear to me, and I imaginethe tens of millions of Americans that were watching [the State of the Union],that this was a political strategy for the White House to play some divide andconquer strategy to placate their right, in an effort to advance a political agenda... The president, he can fly on some aircraft carrier any time he wants, but heshould keep his hands off the Constitution" (Sievers, 2004, February 24).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Battle over Marriage by LEIGH MOSCOWITZ. Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Univ of Illinois Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0252079604
• ISBN 13: 9780252079603
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 163
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Germania