SUPPORTING GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS
DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA’S coverage of gay men and lesbians was overwhelmingly negative. In 1950, newspapers routinely referred to gay people as “perverts,” with headlines such as “Perverts Called Government Menace” in the New York Times and “Sex Perverts Called Risks to Security” in the San Francisco Chronicle. Journalism’s penchant for making disparaging comments about gay people remained intact through the final decade of the century. In 1993, for example, the Chicago Tribune told its readers that pedophilia was rampant in the gay community, saying, “Homosexual men are much more likely than heterosexual men to incorporate boys into their sexual practices”—even though experts insisted that this wasn’t true.1
In the early years of the twenty-first century, however, news organizations changed dramatically vis-à-vis how they treated gay people. As the US Supreme Court and Congress considered a series of cases and issues involving this increasingly visible segment of society, the nation’s news media committed their editorial might to leading the public toward a more enlightened attitude toward a person’s sexual orientation.2
Journalism’s change of heart became clear in 2003 when the nation’s highest court heard a case involving sex between two men.
The circumstances of the case had unfolded on a night in 1998 when someone called the police in Houston, Texas, and complained that “a man with a gun was going crazy” at a particular residence. When officers responded to the complaint and entered John Lawrence’s home, they didn’t find a gun or a disturbance but, instead, saw two men having sex. Lawrence and Tyron Garner were arrested and convicted of engaging in “deviant sexual intercourse.” (The man who’d called the police was later identified as Garner’s boyfriend. He was eventually found guilty of filing a false police report and was sent to jail for thirty days).3
Lawrence and Garner appealed their conviction, and the case made its way to the US Supreme Court. Lawrence v. Texas attracted national attention as a test of state sodomy laws. Up through the 1960s, every state had such a statute, but, by 2003, many of the laws had been eliminated. In Texas and a dozen other states, though, sodomy laws remained on the books.4
After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case, news outlets urged the justices to decriminalize sodomy nationwide. The New York Times wrote that such a ruling would keep pace with other countries that hadn’t just legalized gay sex but also had either approved same-sex marriage—such as Belgium, Canada, and the Netherlands—or had enacted laws banning employment discrimination against gay workers—including all countries in the European Union. “When it comes to protecting the basic civil liberties of all people, including lesbians and gay men,” the Times wrote, “the United States should lead the world, not lag behind it.”5
In June 2003 when the justices announced their decision in Lawrence v. Texas, every major news organization in the country gave prominent play to the six-to-three vote that did away with all remaining state sodomy laws. The Washington Post wrote, “The decision represents an enormous breakthrough in the struggle of gay men and lesbians.” Time magazine went so far as to say the ruling was comparable to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that had desegregated the country’s public schools.6
© Reuters/CORBIS
Among the broadcast journalists who praised the Lawrence v. Texas decision was ABC reporter Michel Martin. “The court has closed a long and painful chapter in the nation’s past when gay men and lesbians were not treated with respect,” she said on the news program Nightline. Martin showed clips from the Ellen and Will & Grace TV shows before stating, “The court is catching up to the public—catching up with present reality.”7
Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage in Massachusetts
Five months after the US Supreme Court legalized gay sex, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled that barring gay people from marrying violated the state constitution. As soon as local officials had time to prepare for the gleeful brides and grooms coming their way, same-sex marriages in the state began.8
The country’s news outlets applauded the action in a flurry of editorials. “Offering an institution as important as marriage to male-female couples only was discriminatory and had to end,” said the online magazine Slate, while the Boston Globe argued that if same-sex couples in the state were only allowed to join together in civil unions but not to marry, that would have “created an odious ‘separate but equal’ version of partnerships under the law.”9
Statements of approval weren’t confined to editorials, as news and feature stories also were sending positive messages—starting with the fact that same-sex couples were stable. “When Gloria Bailey and Linda Davies first pledged their commitment to each other,” USA Today reported, “their love and union were a secret.” The paper then quoted Bailey as saying, “We had a private ceremony, just the two of us, 33 years ago.” Her marriage to Davies in 2004, Bailey continued, was “the culmination of a lifelong dream.” State officials in Massachusetts didn’t keep statistics on how long same-sex couples had been in relationships before they’d been allowed to make them legal, so the San Francisco Chronicle did it. The paper interviewed 400 brides and grooms and then reported that they’d been together an average of twelve years. “Gay couples clearly can and do stick together,” the Chronicle wrote. “And legalizing marriage will lead to even more such stable relationships.”10
Another recurring message the news media communicated was that couples were sexually faithful. A front-page New York Times article reported that Dolores Trzcinski and Marie Auger, together for twenty-five years, “represent an often-overlooked slice of gay America: the monogamous homebodies more likely to have met at Bible study than a bar.” The piece also gave details about two men. “Jeffrey Manley found Jusak Bernhard by posting a note in an online chat room from a man looking to share his life with another Christian man,” the Times wrote. Bernhard was quoted as saying, “Our relationship is faith-based. We do our prayers and Bible readings together and depend on our faith to carry us through difficult times.” The online magazine Salon ran a profile of a lesbian couple who’d been monogamous for fifty-one years—“Fidelity Was Their Path” read one subhead. “We were too busy to have affairs,” Phyllis Lyon said, while Del Martin added, “We love each other. That’s all it takes.”11
News outlets also communicated that gay couples make excellent parents. A front-page article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted a sociology professor as saying that children with parents of the same sex “are every bit as likely to be well-adjusted and psychologically stable as kids who have a father and a mother.” Later in the piece, a mother named Lisa Mandel said, “Being a parent is so huge that it completely overshadows being a lesbian. It doesn’t matter how much money I make or what sexual orientation I am—I’m a parent first.” CBS made a similar point in a 60 Minutes segment. When a correspondent interviewed Carol Adair and Kay Ryan, he asked what impact having two mothers had on their daughter. Adair’s response was articulate as well as thoughtful. “People who are raised in homes that are non-traditional are more flexible,” she said. “And flexible people are strong, while rigid people are weak. People who can bend and look and think—they have an easier time finding their own ethical center.”12
Fighting for Hate Crime Protections
In 2007, the battle for lesbian and gay rights shifted to the US Congress and a campaign to pass legislation that had previously failed to win approval.
Efforts to expand hate crime protections to include actions based on sexual orientation had begun in 1998 after two high school dropouts had tortured and killed a University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard. They’d singled out Shepard because he was gay, and the details of the brutal crime—which included beating the victim and then tying him to a fence and leaving him to die—made headlines throughout the world.13
At the time, hate crimes were defined as violent acts in which victims were targeted specifically because of their race, color, religion, or national origin. Under federal provisions, state and local law enforcement agencies received extra resources to investigate and prosecute such cases. Gay activists attempted, after Shepard’s murder, to persuade Congress to extend the definition to include crimes that had been prompted by a victim’s sexual orientation. Legislation was introduced but didn’t pass.14
Supporters in 2007 had two reasons to hope that progress now could be made. First was the momentum coming from the Lawrence v. Texas decision, and second was same-sex marriage having been approved in Massachusetts.
Opposition from Republican congressional leaders and President George W. Bush, however, killed the legislation. One recurring argument against the bill was that people would be prosecuted for committing a hate crime if they criticized homosexuality, an objection that the bill’s proponents refuted by pointing out that hate crimes are legally defined as physical acts.15
Lesbian and gay activists tried again in 2009. This time, they came armed with statistics showing that more than 12,000 crimes based on a victim’s sexuality had been committed in the previous decade.16
Many news organizations championed the proposed legislation. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, for example, wrote, “Including gay men and lesbians in hate-crime laws reflects America’s greater understanding that sexual orientation is no reason to deny basic human rights.” Other proponents of the bill included Politico, which said it would be “unconscionable” for Congress not to approve the measure, and the Huffington Post, which wrote, “It’s a no-brainer that hate-crimes laws should be expanded to cover sexual orientation.”17
When the bill came up for debate in the House, the country’s two openly gay members of Congress, Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, made powerful speeches on its behalf. The legislation then passed both houses by substantial majorities.18
CNN’s story about President Barack Obama signing the bill reported that it was “the first major federal gay rights legislation” ever approved by Congress.19
Experiencing a Series of Setbacks
Every development involving gay people wasn’t positive, as the era saw plenty of disappointments.
The biggest of the setbacks came when members of Congress introduced the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. The bill—widely referred to as DOMA—defined marriage nationwide as a union between a man and a woman. This meant that options such as filing joint federal tax returns and receiving a spouse’s Social Security benefits wouldn’t be available to same-sex couples, even if their marriage was legal in the state where they were living.20
News organizations denounced the proposed bill. The Boston Globe said the legislation “does not deserve to pass,” and the New York Times called it “unfair and unconstitutional.” Slate wrote, “DOMA is an effort to deny a class of citizens a fundamental civil right.”21
Despite the protests, the House passed the bill 342 to 67, and the Senate followed suit with a vote of 85 to 14. President Bill Clinton then signed DOMA into law.22
The next major setback was a reaction to Massachusetts legalizing same-sex marriage. After that action, social conservatives across the country began pushing for their states to amend their constitutions to block the same-sex marriage initiative from expanding.
When Missouri state legislators introduced such an amendment, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked its readers to “reject discrimination and vote no.” Likewise, when Michigan and Georgia legislators proposed amendments, the Detroit News wrote, “Locking into the constitution a permanent ban against same-sex marriage ignores the changing nature of attitudes,” and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked, “Why enshrine discrimination and hostility toward gay Georgians into the constitution, a document designed to expand liberties, not restrict them?”23
But the editorial statements repeatedly fell on deaf ears. By the end of 2008, thirty states—including Missouri, Michigan, and Georgia—had passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.24
Another disappointing battle played out in Congress with efforts to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. At the time, thirty-three states had no statutes protecting gay workers, which meant that employers could reject job applicants or fire current employees solely because of their sexual orientation.25
The measure that was drafted in 2007—abbreviated to ENDA—would ban such actions by all government agencies and by private employers with fifteen or more workers.26
News outlets threw their editorial heft behind the proposal. “The right to work is among the most basic of American rights,” wrote the Washington Post, “and it should no longer be off-limits to gay men and lesbians.” The Huffington Post called the legislation a “vital measure,” and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said, “This bill would make a historic statement about tolerance.”27
Barney Frank introduced the bill in the House but soon ran into a major complication. He informally polled his colleagues and learned that the legislation had a good chance of passing if it covered gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals but that it would fail if it also covered transgender workers. So Frank removed language from the bill to protect employees from discrimination based on their “gender identity.”28
Many activists were furious, accusing Frank of discriminating against an important segment of the community. The congressman defended his decision, telling the New York Times, “There is a tendency in American politics for the people who feel most passionately about an issue to be unrealistic in what a democratic political system can deliver, and that can be self-defeating.”29
Frank’s bill, without the phrase “gender identity,” was passed in the House, but it died in a Senate committee.30
Yet another setback came in the country’s most populous state. The California Supreme Court had approved same-sex marriage in May 2008, but opponents quickly began an effort to overturn the ruling through a voter referendum known as Proposition 8.31
All ten of California’s largest-circulation newspapers spoke out against the initiative. The Los Angeles Times: “By banning same-sex marriage, Prop. 8 would create second-class citizens.” The San Diego Union-Tribune: “We urge a No vote on Proposition 8.” The Orange County Register: “We recommend a ‘no’ vote on Prop. 8.”32
On Election Day, however, 52 percent of California voters supported the initiative. Analysts later said the referendum had succeeded because the leaders of the Catholic Church and Mormon Church had united, while also reaching out to African-American congregations.33
Allowing Lesbian and Gay Soldiers to Serve Openly
A CNN interview helped propel a new issue into the spotlight in 2009. The man being questioned was former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, and the topic was “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Under that policy, American military officials didn’t ask soldiers about their sexual orientation, which meant lesbians and gay men could serve in the military as long as they didn’t tell their superiors about their sexuality.
When CNN anchor John King asked Powell about the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the general said it was time for a change. “The policy that came about in 1993 was correct for the time,” Powell said. “Sixteen years have now gone by, and a lot has changed with respect to attitudes within our country, and therefore I think this is a policy that should be reviewed.”34
News outlets responded with editorials calling for lesbian and gay soldiers to be open about their sexuality. “Repealing the ban on gays serving in the military is long overdue,” the Philadelphia Inquirer insisted, while USA Today said point blank, “The policy is simply wrong.” The Daily Beast website made its case against “don’t ask, don’t tell” by profiling ten exemplary soldiers who’d been discharged because of the policy, including a lesbian who’d graduated at the top of her class from the Naval Academy and a gay man who’d been honored as the Marine of the Year.35
The combination of Powell’s statement and the many editorials prompted politicians and military leaders to think seriously about the issue. In President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, he said, “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love.” Department of Defense officials then undertook a comprehensive review of the policy.36
After the study was completed, news outlets turned the results into major news. TV anchors who summarized the findings on the news programs implied that the policy’s days were definitely numbered. Diane Sawyer of ABC World News said, “Today, the Pentagon released its long-awaited study on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and how the troops will react if gays can serve openly in the military. After seeing the study, top brass are reaffirming it’s time for a change.” Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News sent the same message, saying, “Today at the Pentagon, this nation’s top military commanders said the time has come for gay Americans to serve openly in their nation’s armed forces.” 37
The biggest takeaway from the study was that allowing lesbians and gay men to serve openly wouldn’t damage military effectiveness. Specifically, most active-duty soldiers said they didn’t foresee any problems if the ban was lifted. Indeed, 69 percent of them said they’d already worked with fellow soldiers they believed to be gay or lesbian and that fact hadn’t caused any problems whatsoever.38
Even more news outlets then called for repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Salon condemned it as a “loathsome” policy, while Politico went with a more pragmatic argument, saying, “Enforcement has resulted in 13,000 service members—volunteer soldiers that this nation needs—being hounded out of the ranks. This is a loss that a nation fighting two wars can ill afford.”39
Both houses of Congress voted, by the end of the year, to repeal the policy. President Obama then signed the bill into law.40
Advancing Toward Marriage Equality
By 2012, same-sex marriage had moved back onto the nation’s radar screen. This was partly because several more states had made it legal for pairs of brides and pairs of grooms to tie the nuptial knot—the total had climbed to ten plus the District of Columbia—but mostly because two court cases had the potential to move marriage equality forward on the national level.41
The broader of the two cases involved Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer. They’d become a couple in 1967 and had shared a life for forty years. A low point for them came in 1980 when Spyer was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, while a high point came in 2007 when they traveled to Canada and were married. When Spyer died two years after the wedding, she left her estate to her wife. Windsor didn’t have to pay state inheritance tax because New York recognized the couple’s marriage. She was denied that benefit on the federal level, however, because the Defense of Marriage Act said the term “spouse” only applied when a marriage was between a man and a woman. So Windsor had to pay $363,000 in estate taxes.42
Windsor then sued the federal government, seeking a refund and saying DOMA discriminated against same-sex couples. By the end of 2012, her case had progressed through the legal system and was scheduled to be heard by the US Supreme Court.43
The second case revolved around the California voter referendum that had halted same-sex marriages in that state. In 2009, two couples had filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. By the end of 2012, the US Supreme Court had agreed to hear their case.44
Any number of news organizations weighed in on the two lawsuits, with the editorial statements consistently favoring the gay and lesbian plaintiffs.
“The Supreme Court has the opportunity to advance human rights” by ruling for Edie Windsor, wrote the Boston Globe, while the Washington Post labeled DOMA “indefensible—a law that relegates the nation’s gay and lesbian citizens to second-class status. One of the most notable statements came from CNN, which broke from the tradition among TV news outlets by taking a firm editorial stand on Windsor v. United States. “The Court needs to do the right thing and end discrimination against gay couples,” the network stated on its website. “The social and civil discrimination that persists as long as our federal government does not recognize same-sex marriage is inexcusable.”45
News outlets also urged the Supreme Court to side with the two California couples. “The day Proposition 8 is overturned can’t come too soon,” wrote the San Jose Mercury News. The New York Times agreed, saying, “There are 18,000 same-sex couples in the state who were married before Proposition 8 was passed, and their presence does not seem to have damaged relationships between men and women.” The Daily Beast didn’t focus on the couples but on the 40,000 California children living with either two moms or two dads, arguing that “the children of same-sex couples need their parents to have full recognition and full status.”46
© lev radin/Shutterstock
When the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the cases in March 2013, the news media provided saturation coverage. The story led the network and cable TV news programs and ran on the front page of every major paper and news website in the country. One of the most frequently reproduced quotes came from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Comparing how DOMA treated opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples, she said, “There are two kinds of marriages—the full marriage and then the sort of ‘skim milk’ marriage.”47
News organizations made sure to report the benefits that married lesbian or gay couples weren’t currently receiving but that they’d have if the justices struck down DOMA. These included that couples would be allowed family hospital visitation rights and that a husband or wife who was a citizen of another country could remain in the United States with his or her spouse.48
Three months after the oral arguments, news outlets pulled out all the stops when they reported that the justices, by a pair of five-to-four votes, had struck down DOMA and had said marriages could resume in California. Headlines in the country’s most influential news organizations communicated the celebratory tone that flavored the coverage. The New York Times: “Victory for Equal Rights.” The Washington Post: “Equality Triumphs.” Slate: “Anti-Gay Is Yesterday.”49
Journalistic voices had another chance to show their support for lesbian and gay rights in October 2014 when the Supreme Court chose not to rule on the question of whether state prohibitions on same-sex marriage violate the Constitution. “By passing on that debate,” the Huffington Post gleefully announced, “the court gave a final legal stamp of approval to marriage equality in five states.” Later in its story, the online publication—which by this point was the most popular political website in the country, with 110 million unique visitors each month—described the development as “a monumental achievement for the gay rights community.”50
Two popular sites that focus on polling data quickly pointed out that the court’s action would legalize marriage in several more states as well. This reality prompted FiveThirtyEight to place the upbeat headline “Same-Sex Marriage Is Now Legal for a Majority of the U.S.” above its story. Real-ClearPolitics expressed its pleasure with the milestone in the text of its story, reporting, “Activists across the country were elated by what now appears to be a clear path to a nationwide victory in the coming months and years.”51
Securing New Rights—with the News Media’s Help
Gay men and lesbians had, by a decade and a half into the new millennium, made stunning progress in their campaign for equal rights. Most notably, sex acts between two men or two women had been legalized, lesbian and gay soldiers were serving openly, and the nation’s highest court had ruled that two women or two men who had the right to marry in their home states are entitled to federal benefits.
After the June 2013 ruling in the Edie Windsor case, a long list of additional states legalized same-sex marriage. Each time the issue came up for debate, news organizations spoke in favor of marriage equality. As Illinois lawmakers were considering legislation, for example, the Chicago Tribune said they should “Make a firm declaration that same-sex marriage is in the best interest of the state and its residents because the law would strengthen families, protect the interests of children and affirm personal freedom”; two weeks later, Illinois gay and lesbian couples had the right to marry. Likewise, after a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled in May 2014 that the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, the Philadelphia Inquirer pleaded with the governor to let the decision stand, saying, “It is time to give gay couples the ability to enjoy the same legal status as heterosexual couples”; soon after that, Pennsylvania couples were walking down the aisle.52
Judicial officials and lawmakers at the national and state levels clearly had played key roles in the various advancements that had taken place since 2003, as they were the institutions that made the rulings and passed the laws establishing that lesbians and gay men should no longer be treated like “skim milk” citizens. Another important force deserving credit is the army of activists who worked to persuade the justices, legislators, and American public that discrimination based on sexual orientation was unfair.
A close look at the journalism produced during the early years of the twenty-first century shows that the news media also used their formidable resources on behalf of the cause. Whether it was bringing attention to an issue by placing it at the top of a national newscast or nudging a particular initiative forward by publishing strongly worded editorials backing it, news organizations relentlessly adopted the position that these stigmatized and marginalized men and women were fully entitled to the same rights that straight Americans enjoyed.
In the next breath after acknowledging the progress that’s been made, however, it must be pointed out that the struggle hasn’t ended. As of 2015, many states still have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, and Congress hasn’t passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act—which means that gay workers in half the nation are still being denied jobs because of their sexual orientation. What’s more, precious few of the actions that represent milestones toward equality for gay men and lesbians have improved the lives of transgender Americans.
It’s impossible to know for certain, because of the shifting tides of politics, the degree to which future judicial officials and lawmakers will help secure additional rights. The consistent record of support provided by journalism, however, should assure concerned observers that the news media will continue to do whatever they can to champion the cause.
