Read Online The Battle Over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism Through the Media by Leigh Moscowitz - Free Book Online
Authors: Leigh Moscowitz
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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
LC
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7/29/13 9:38 AM
Fighting the “Battle to Be Boring”
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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,
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
LC
Moscowitz_BattleoverMarriage_text.indd 28
7/29/13 9:38 AM
Fighting the “Battle to Be Boring”
29
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,
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