The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media (8 page)

Arguably, however, the contemporary gay rights movement is in a differ-

ent position. Its dependency on media attention has greatly diminished, as much of the movement’s political work does not necessitate “the media’s gaze”

(Carroll & Ratner, 1999). No longer requiring press attention to mobilize and attract members, many gay rights groups take a more cautious stance toward media publicity. As my interviews indicate, many within the movement are critical of those groups that “gain visibility by becoming the exotic objects of heterosexist media copy” (Carroll & Ratner, 1999, p. 20).

As a corrective to the media “freak show” in which groups like ACT UP

(AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) perform a “spectacle” for the television news cameras, many of today’s movement leaders craft communication strategies with straight allies, ones that are directed toward straight audiences, in an effort to normalize and mainstream gay and lesbian life. As this next section highlights, most activists were initial y resistant to even talking about the “m word” in the mainstream media.

The Struggle from Within: Making Marriage Matter

I was curious early on in this project about how social actors in identity politics come to organize around and highlight one particular goal—in this case, achieving equal marriage rights—over others. News reporting on the issue presented same-sex marriage as “the” gay interest—constructing a mass movement united by one homogenous goal, often reducing gay activism to

a single-issue cause. But the same media coverage that stressed marriage as emblematic of gay activism in general also worked to silence the internal struggle over marriage that has been at the center of debate within the gay snl

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community. As Roberta Sklar of the Task Force explained, “If we are forced by the dominant culture to deal with many of these family recognition issues under the umbrella of marriage, then we will . . . We as an organization have never put our eggs in any one basket, and we’re not putting it in the marriage basket. We wrangle at the fact that we’ve been pushed by societal pressures to look at all these things under that umbrella, but we won’t adhere to that in a rigid way.”

A relatively new issue, marriage equality was not a major goal of gay political activism until the mid-1990s, as groups failed to find consensus over the marriage issue and were focused on what many activists considered to be

more pressing concerns—namely, “HIV and health care, AIDS prevention,

the repeal of sodomy laws, anti-gay violence, job discrimination, immigration, media coverage, military antigay policy, sex inequality, and the saturation of everyday life by heterosexual privilege” (Warner, 1999, p. 84). Gay marriage was not a part of early political activist efforts, mostly because marriage laws by their very nature were opposed to the basic tenets of what the gay movement historical y stood for: the state regulation of sexuality.

Recognizing the historical tensions over the marriage issue from within the gay community, my analysis in this section shows how, for the most part, gay rights activists did not proactively pursue a battle over marriage rights. These informants ful y recognized the risks of bringing gay marriage into the realm of mainstream political debate and public discourse but nonetheless felt that avoiding the issue would hinder progress on a wide variety of LGBT issues.

My own entry into this project naively assumed a proactive, organized

effort on the part of gay rights activists to push same-sex marriage onto the public and media agendas. To some extent, some of the smaller single-issue groups that were organized specifically around marriage did actively seek to do battle on the marriage front. But it became almost instantaneously clear during the interview process that for most activists, especially those who were with the larger, multi-issue gay rights organizations, same-sex marriage was not a battle of choice, but one they were forced to contend with due to pressures from conservative right opponents—and fought begrudgingly in

the arena of the mainstream media.

Activists commonly referred to their position in the debate as “playing

defense,” claiming that marriage “was not a battle of our choosing.” Evoking the metaphor of a skirmish that breaks out at a school playground, one informant described the gay movement as being the smal er, weaker kid who is perpetual y picked on and eventual y has to stand up for himself. As Roberta s

explained, “When a bully kicks you in the teeth, and you don’t fight back, n

they know they can kick you over and over and over again. So it’s critical for l

the little guy to get up and do something and say, ‘you are not going to be LC

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able to do this to me! Even if my mouth is bleeding, you are not going to be able to kick me in the teeth again!’”

Continuing the analogy of a stronger, tougher, more organized enemy

bullying gay rights proponents, Chris of the Log Cabin Republicans argued,

“They [social conservatives] talk about the gay agenda forcing this issue, when really, we were simply reacting to the right-wing agenda.” Similarly, Michael, communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, explained, “marriage interestingly enough came to prominence not because

of our community but because of our opponents.”

In his estimation, conservatives sensed defeat after the 2003
Lawrence v.

Texas
decision when the U.S. Supreme Court repealed anti-sodomy laws, seen as a landmark victory for the gay and lesbian rights movement. Fearing that
Lawrence
might pave the way for legalizing more rights for gay and lesbian citizens (including marriage), conservative groups in a retaliatory and preemptive move began to push state-by-state for constitutional amendments that would “shut the door on marriage equality as much as possible.”

Conservative groups sensed they could use the gay marriage controversy for political gain, rally constituents around the issue, and fire up their core base.

My activist informants did not necessarily credit conservative opponents with
creating
the issue, but argued that “they propelled this into the national spotlight in a way that was not our community’s doing” (Michael, Human

Rights Campaign).

Taken further, according to many activists, the gay marriage debate was a diabolical political strategy crafted by the Bush administration. Conservative strategists worked to construct gay people as the modern equivalent of

“the boogie man,” as they have historically done, and to benefit politically by scapegoating an already disenfranchised group. This sentiment is reflected in the words of one informant who describes a conspiratorial strategy on the part of the Bush administration, painting a picture of White House staff sitting around a conference room conjuring up ways to win the next election.

Karl Rove’s agenda was to say, look, I’ve got a president who’s going into his reelection cycle. He’s not all that strong. I’ve got a war that I can’t quite explain.

I’ve got an economy I haven’t been able to turn around. I’ve got 45 million Americans without health insurance. I’ve got an education system that’s still got all the same problems it had. Hmmm . . . How are we going to get our base revved up and that little core middle we’ve got to pull over, to get our 51 percent distracted enough to not ask us the tough questions like deficits and balanced budgets? I know, we’ll talk about gay marriage! And you know, candidates have been campaigning forever on fear strategies. And Reagan, it was the Cold War s

. . . Bush, its 9/11 and those gay people, we’re coming to get you! (Cheryl, former n

president and executive director of the Human Rights Campaign)

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So while the marriage conversation took on a new life after the
Lawrence
and
Goodridge
decisions, it was when the Bush administration made the issue part of the 2004 presidential campaign that gay rights activists universally said they had to “reshuffle the deck” and turn more organizational resources and attention toward marriage. Activists anticipated the right-wing response to the historic
Goodridge
case (legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts) to be vehement. But movement leaders said they were shocked when

the president went before Congress and asked representatives to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Cheryl, then president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), recalls her reaction to the president’s call for the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), a move that

pushed gay marriage from the periphery to the center. “The president took to the airwaves in February calling for the passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Now, this is a president who holds very few news conferences, and he held an emergency news conference, saying the most pressing matter before the American public is those gay people, and we better get that Federal Marriage Amendment passed or else! Talk about catapulting it and convincing people there’s some sort of emergency here and the sky is falling.”

The aftermath of the
Goodridge
decision and the process of being thrown into the center of mainstream presidential politics forced gay rights organizations to shift priorities in order to dedicate increased energy, resources, and messaging to marriage. Seth, who was elevated to a new position of vice president of the Marriage Project for the HRC as a result of this increased public attention, recalled, “I’ve never actually seen an organization as big as this one turn so quickly to make an issue a political priority.” As the national LGBT organization that works primarily on Capitol Hill, they “reshuffled resources relatively quickly” to make sure that the FMA was defeated.

Coming to the decision to foreground the marriage issue was, in Seth’s view, not mired in controversy, but was rather “surprisingly tension-free.” In other words, it became obvious to organizational leaders that they had to al ocate the resources to protect the
Goodridge
decision, defeat the FMA, and build a political climate state-by-state that would support marriage equality. But with limited funds, resources, and staff, turning to focus on one priority meant that time and attention was invariably taken from others. Michael, who at the time worked as the HRC’s communications specialist (by the time of the later interview period, he had become the director of communication), explains how shifting political priorities toward marriage led to organizational strains.

s

It [marriage] was an issue that we obviously spent less time and resources on, n

because while that does equal full equality, there are so many other issues and things in this country where LGBT people are denied, you know, their right l

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to a job. Because in 34 states you can still be fired for being gay or lesbian.

In 44 states you can be fired for being transgender in this country. So there are workplace issues, there are hate crimes issues, there’s access to HIV/AIDS

prevention and treatment. It’s not that we are ever at a loss of issues to deal with. But the marriage conversation has required us to focus in more closely on relationship recognition.

In a subsequent interview, the former president of the HRC indicated that shifting institutional priorities and resources to marriage was contentious, the center of an “unresolvable conflict” that eventually led to her departure soon after the defeats of the 2004 election. In her estimation, marriage was never a goal of the organization, at least not at the level that it should have been.

She criticized her former organization, and the national movement more

general y, for
reacting
to the
Goodridge
victory. In her view the unanticipated success in the legislative arena caught gay rights leaders off guard, forcing the messaging arm of the movement to play catch-up. Criticizing the defensive posture and the lack of preparedness on the part of the movement, she said the marriage win created organizational pains of having to scramble for

resources. The leaders at her organization were “not celebrating the passage of
Goodridge
and embracing it; they’re saying [sighs], ‘Oh, shit, now that it’s here, I guess we better fight this good fight.’”

Leaders of the nation’s largest gay rights organization weren’t the only ones with cold feet. As her words reflect, the resistance, fear, and hesitance over marriage that Cheryl described within her former organization was indicative of a tension felt on a larger scale within the gay and lesbian community. Evan, considered by many to be the father of the modern movement for marriage

equality, spoke at length about the internal debates over marriage that were waged long before the victory in Massachusetts. His work on marriage began in the 1980s when he worked pro bono on behalf of gay couples wanting to marry. At that time, he described his camp of pro-marriage supporters within the LGBT activist community as a “small minority.”

Resistance within the gay community came from those who were opposed

to marriage based on ideological grounds and tactical grounds. The ideo-

logical camp was opposed to fighting for marriage because they didn’t like what the institution represented, feeling marriage was too narrow in scope.

As one activist explained, some members felt like “instead we ought to be talking about more broadly challenging family structure or . . . the way our society provides protections and benefits and so on.” The other category of resistance among activists were people who, regardless of their ideological s

position, felt that marriage would be a strategic failure for the movement as n