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Did the Media Kill Equal Marriage?

By Steve Lyons

When Mary Bonauto argued Goodridge vs. the Massachusetts Department of Public Health before the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) of Massachusetts, she presented perhaps one of the smartest legal arguments in the recent history of law. While the couples she represented were gay, her argument had nothing to do with sexual preference and everything to do with being human.

What she argued, essentially, was simple: neither the Massachusetts’ Constitution nor the Department of Public Health had anything on the books that forbade marriage by same-sex couples (as long as they met the other criteria established by centuries of law).

In respect to logic and language, it was equal in brilliance to former President Bill Clinton’s denial of perjury by sticking to a definition of sex that meant “penetration.” However, the SJC’s ruling, in favor of Bonauto, was a long way from supporting or encouraging “gay marriage.” The court could only rule for or against the argument presented them, not interpret the argument in order to further their personal or religious beliefs. What the SJC said was that there was no constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.

Notice the word “gay” never comes up?

Selling Newspapers, Creating a Lightning Rod

Just as words mattered in Bonauto’s argument, they mattered to the press, too, especially as they set out to explain what happened here in the Bay State. For those who awoke to the headlines—both online and in printed publications across the world touting “Gay Marriage”—it was a lot like waking up with a hangover and saying, “What the hell happened?” Well, it was a headache for people who think. And that’s because what started out as curing an injustice regarding (adult) human rights was, with a few simple words, turned into something about sexuality.

While you’d like to give the headline writers credit for knowing exactly what they were doing—using language to create a political and polemical lightening rod—chances are they were just like everyone else, hard-working folk eager to come up with a catchy headline so they could get home and put their feet up on a

La-Z-Boy. But you have to wonder if they scratched their heads when Tom Brokaw said the words “gay marriage” and thought, “Gosh, did I coin that phrase?”—or if they even cared. Moreover, does it matter what you call it? Isn’t a rose by any other name …

To many, yes. But—

“Gay marriage is understandable shorthand, but it’s a misleading term,” says Peter Kadzis, longtime editor of the Boston Phoenix. “Marriage is about more than sex … It’s about property rights, it’s about inheritance, it’s about family. ‘Gay marriage’ is just as misleading as ‘black marriage’ would be or as ‘white marriage’ would be … it’s a phony qualifier.”

Carisa Cunningham, director of Public Affairs and Education for Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), says, “The problem with the phrase ‘gay marriage’ is that it suggests that marriage between people of the same sex is different from marriage between people of different sexes. It suggests that what we’re after is modifying marriage rather than being included in marriage. ‘Same-sex marriage’ actually has the same problem ... however, given the media’s need for shorthand, ‘gay marriage’ is something we may have to live with.”

Evan Wolfson, executive director of the Freedom to Marry organization, and other like-minded colleagues, says the wording matters a great deal. “I have long advocated that we—meaning advocates for equality, and our allies and the media—not call this gay marriage because we are not fighting for gay marriage,” says Wolfson, author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry.

“… The single most important difference is the vocabulary. Marriage is a statement that everyone understands. …there’s only one system of protection for families across all 50 state lines and that that system is called marriage.”

Psycholinquistics, the study of the psychology of language, shows that much of what makes you you is how and why you apply meanings to words. We’re not just flesh and blood, but an integrated entity of beliefs and thoughts built on training through words. Some call it brainwashing, but let’s not go there. Fact is, we are wired from the get-go to create associations between words and feelings and if you think the opponents of equal marriage don’t understand this, through study or intuition, you are naïve.

The History of the Spin Search for the words “gay marriage” on The Boston Globe web site and you get 2,110 related articles; do the same on the Boston Herald and you get 1,714. Besides telling you that both companies’ tracking software seems to be working fine, it also indicates just how ingrained in the culture this short-hand phrase has become.

Or is a conspiracy underfoot?

In the interest of being as lazy as our media brothers, look at a somewhat in-depth May 19, 2004, article found on Boston.com [owned by The Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times, often considered “the nation’s newspaper—understand the implication here—“nation’s newspaper,” the originator of how others talk about topics] in which Mark Jurkowitz, a former Globe staff writer, tidies up just how important “gay marriage” became just two days after the SJC ruled that the Massachusetts constitution [italicized commentary unavoidable, but no disrespect intended]:

“The first day of same-sex marriage … [kudos for not saying ‘gay-marriage’ right off the bat] [led] all three network newscasts and [landed] on front pages yesterday from Tulsa, Okla., to Toledo, Ohio. And although interest was milder overseas, the dramatic cultural milestone generated headlines and commentary everywhere from Rio de Janeiro to Prague.

“This is what we call an ‘A story’ day,” said Paul Sparrow, the director of media for the Washington-based Newseum, which posts the front pages of about 300 U.S. and foreign papers online every day. The news got dramatic play even in parts of this country that are culturally conservative, he added, because “they all know this is a big story that has electoral implications.”

[So, there was a conspiracy?]

On a day when a suicide bomber killed the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the same-sex marriage story kicked off Monday evening’s newscasts on ABC, CBS, and NBC. ABC’s “Nightline” examined the political and social implications of gay marriage [he just couldn’t resist] as part of a Monday night program dubbed “Culture Wars: Religion and Politics in a Divided Nation.”

The Washington Post and The New York Times [“the nation’s newspaper,” which owns The Boston Globe, remember] made the Massachusetts same-sex ceremonies their most prominent Page 1 stories yesterday. [While The Boston Globe dedicated most of its front page to the news, the Boston Herald did not mention the subject on its front page, bless their editorial hearts.] Throughout the United States, below headlines such as “Gay pairs unite, legally” and “Gays, lesbians say, ‘I do!,’ papers mixed accounts of elated same-sex couples exchanging vows with quotes from opponents and a sense of the public’s divided sentiments on the issue. The Cincinnati Enquirer ran the headline ‘Same-sex weddings make history’ under a somewhat cryptic label that read “For better or for worse.”

Around the globe, news of the events in Massachusetts generated curiosity if not intense media interest. Mainstream media published straightforward reports about the marriages, commenting not so much on the issue itself as on the scope of public reaction in the United States. [shock and awe!] …

In the United States, coverage of the issue was inextricably tied to election-year politics. [no kidding!]

Blah, blah, blah…

And The Boston Globe is still at it. On August 30, one of the major headlines was about Bush bashing gay marriage and the Massachusetts SJC for allowing gay marriage to exist. Never mind that, again, the SJC did not rule to allow gay marriage; it allowed marriage for all.

The point here is that words are power of the psychological kind.

While one should never give Bush too much credit for being too smart—if at all—you can bet his buddy Karl Rove knows exactly what he’s doing. You can just hear him telling Bush, “Keeping spitting it out—“gay marriage, gay marriage.”

But shouldn’t Bush know better? He’s always ranting and raving about how the press uses words—those nasty things—to misrepresent his good deeds. He’s not invading Iraq, he’s saving democracy! He’s not spying on you, he’s saving the world from terrorism! Damn, if everyone would just get the language right he’d be a king by any other name.

And so we’re on the record: Neither the The Boston Globe nor the Boston Herald returned calls to discuss their editorial policies about using the phrase “gay marriage” versus “equal marriage.”

And neither would The New York Times.

Geez, doesn’t anyone want to talk about policy anymore?

Language Matters

In the August 20 issue of The Boston Globe Magazine, community activist Maria Elena criticized the use of the term “illegal immigrant” to describe people who arrive on U.S. soil without proper visas intact.

“We don’t call people ‘illegal’ who steal or who launder money,” she said. “There is a real intention in the way words are used to dehumanize, to denigrate a group of people.”

Evan Wolfson says, “Nationally, my criticism would not be that the coverage is not fair, but it’s not always in-depth enough [we know, it runs on sound bytes] and it tends to go too much to the chess game or the horse race of it. There is not a thoughtful exploration of the claims made by the opponents and how untrue they are, and on the other hand, the reality and diversity of gay people’s lives and why our families need marriage is not covered. So it’s not so much that it’s not fair … but there’s a tendency to get to the ‘who’s winning?’

“When they refer to the anti-gay amendments as marriage amen ments or gay marriage amendments … they are not just about marriage, but are sweeping anti-gay prescriptions masquerading as relating to marriage or only about marriage. That’s an example of a harmful story and laziness on the part of the media … and that’s a deficit in the coverage.”

Perhaps NAACP Chair Julian Bond said it best. “Gay and lesbian rights are not special rights in any way,” he told The Roanoke Times in August 2006. “It isn’t special to be free from discrimination. It is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship.”

As is the right to marriage, one would surmise, despite recent actions in more than 40 U.S. states to either restrict same-sex marriage via legislation or proposed constitutional amendments. According to a recent Associated Press (AP) article, “The national gay marriage map is a patchwork of court rulings, pending cases, state laws and voter-approved constitutional amendments—with the overwhelming majority supporting a traditional view of marriage [including those well-established parts of straight marriage, such as spousal abuse, child neglect and divorce]. Voters have approved constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in 19 states and as many as 45 states have either amendments or laws outlawing same-sex weddings.”

Is the AP right wing or just lazy? Who knows.

Even in Massachusetts, arguably the bluest of blue states and the land of marital firsts—the first colony of the original 13 to hold a civil marriage in 1621 and the first to sanctify equal marriage—an effort is under way to place a question on the November 2008 ballot that could deem same-sex unions unconstitutional. Would such an initiative be underway if the Globe had insisted on calling it “equal marriage”?

“I think the radical right knew they could exploit this issue before we had an opportunity to educate the American public,” says Mary Breslauer, a communications consultant, activist and executive producer and co-host of “The Agenda with Joe Solmonese,” a two-hour radio show on GLBT issues and culture.

And how did they do it? By calling it “gay marriage.”

What is Marriage, Anyway?

E.J. Graff, the author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution and a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis, says, “In Massachusetts we’ve done a lot of education. Gay people have been organizing and out here for decades, and that’s not true in most states. The rest of the country is coming along. … Everyone feels that they know what marriage is.

“We all grow up with a shared social idea of that institution, rooted in our childhoods. Changing that is a big deal, and most people haven’t thought about it deeply enough to get beyond their first instinct that something so important shouldn’t be changed. But if they get a chance to talk with us about why we want the freedom to marry, many—maybe most—people are only five conversations away from coming to see that Mary and Ann should be able to get married. These laws [against equal marriage] pass because the opposition runs those initiatives in states where those five conversations have not been had.”

Others in the GLBT community think the horse may have left the gate the gate too quickly, creating widespread backlash and a media blitz that may have been avoided if the concept of equal marriage had moved at a slower, steadier pace.

“I think the Goodridge case was ahead of its time, but only by several years,” says Michael Bronski, a longtime GLBT activist and a visiting professor of women’s studies and Jewish studies at Dartmouth College. “I think what scared people wasn’t the responsible media coverage … but the right-wing news outlets. You generally find people more or less open to antidiscrimination laws … and the leap to civil union is a simple one, but to marriage, a harder one.

“If I would hold anyone responsible, it would be the mainstream media when they get quotes from people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, C.J. Doyle…. These people are quoted as if they are actually reasonable, as if Pat Robertson has any credibility beyond his dwindling base, or you have a TV debate with Barney Frank and William Bennett, who has been discredited as a hatemonger and a compulsive gambler. Then you have people saying that if you allow gay marriage you’ll have people marrying dogs….”

Or sheep, as reported in the Colorado press in March after Janet Rowland, the much-maligned running mate of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez, compared same-sex marriage to bestiality, asking “Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?”

With such a level of messaging extremes, Bronski concedes that the center of this critical issue becomes harder to define.

“When you put Bill Bennett on TV with Barney Frank,” says Bronski, “the truth doesn’t lay in between … it moves the alleged center way to the right.”

Shouldn’t the Alternative Press Know Better?

Considering what is at stake—equal rights—you’d think the alternative press would be very guarded about using the term

“gay marriage.”

But read Bay Windows or IN Newsweekly [both of them “gay newspapers,” whatever that means—can a paper have a sexual orientation or be sexually active?] and the term “gay marriage” is bandied about as if they had invented it.

Why use the phrase?

In one recent story Bay Windows reported that Nepal had seen its first “gay marriage” between two men. How hard can it be to come up with alternative solution to a headline? Here are a few tries:

“Nepal sees first same-sex couple married.”

“First same-sex couple married in Nepal”

“Equal marriage comes to Nepal”

The Boston Phoenix does it, too. One of the more adult of the adult newspapers in the country, it has no problem calling equal marriage “gay marriage.” Seems they’d have even more desire to put everyone on equal footing since their content appeals to straights and gays and transgender alike doing all sorts of “things.”

Even Dan Savage in The Weekly Dig, (August 2, 2006), uses the term “gay marriage” in a response to reader. Not that Boston Spirit is innocent of using the term. In our first issue one of the tabs at the top of the page says “gay marriage.”

What’s the deal here? Don’t we know better? Or is it that the gay and alternative press going too mainstream?

The same words or phrases may cross subcultures, if you want to call them that, but they have entirely different meanings and purpose for each group. People like George Dubya, Karl Rove and no doubt much of the straight press use it to marginalize the issue by cueing that being straight is better than being gay. “Gay marriage” is a way of disparaging the want to partake in a ceremony that the culture at large publicly recognizes.

Gays, gay publications and the alternative press use the term in an entirely different way. “Gay marriage” is used as an inclusive term, to bring everyone into the fold—to say, yo can do this ceremony—versus using it to exclude and denigrate.

The other thing that can’t be ignored is the “shit happens” factor. Gay press, straight press, whatever—the job of putting language in a limited space in a publication can be challenging—online and in print. True, the word marriage doesn’t need qualification—“Lucy and Jill got married” … it says enough, right?—but clarity and proper language hardly sells newspapers and magazines.

What of the age-old credo that all publicity is good publicity? Can that also work to the advantage of equal marriage rights nationwide?

“I don’t feel angry at the media coverage,” says Graff. “Rather, we want to keep educating reporters about what we are really asking for. People’s minds are changing every day. Many reporters are getting it. Our families are getting it. What we want is to have the same options in our lives as our heterosexual siblings—to be free to marry, or not marry, the person we love. There’s no reason the options should change because of the sex of the person we love, and more and more people are seeing it that way.”

Can “Equal Marriage” Be Salvaged?

Sociopolitical campaigns and civil rights struggles are not won easily, or quickly. Those on the frontlines for equal marriage often make comparisons to the women’s Suffrage movement—nearly 100 years in the making before the 19th Amendment was passed—and the longtime struggle for civil rights that led to the 13th and 14th Amendments.

Who’s winning this war on phraseology regarding marriage? It’s too soon to say, but eventually, inevitably, someday marriage will be just marriage, no adjectives needed.