The Advocate publishes (online) a dissenting commentary:
Over the last months, conservatives have complained to The Advocate about its inaccurate and glowing coverage of Obama administration official Susan Rice, its lack of coverage of John Bolton’s support for “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal and gay marriage, and its whitewashing of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s failed two years of dominance. . . . It’s time The Advocate stops painting Democrats with a perfect brush and starts highlighting the efforts of gay conservatives working to limit government’s involvement in LGBT people’s lives.
15 Comments for “LGBT Media Myopia”
posted by Tom on
It’s time The Advocate stops painting Democrats with a perfect brush and starts highlighting the efforts of gay conservatives working to limit government’s involvement in LGBT people’s lives.
I don’t read the Advocate enough to have an opinion about their respective coverage of Democrats and Republicans, so I’ll take the “perfect brush” statement as a given.
And I don’t doubt that coverage of “the efforts of gay conservatives working to limit government’s involvement in LGBT people’s lives” is not covered with the same attention that the current battles over marriage in Maryland, Rhode Island and New Hampshire are covered.
I’ll grant you that the LGBT press that I do read regularly is not as balanced as it might be, because it largely ignores the efforts of gay conservatives to replace the income tax with the Fair Tax, to eliminate social security in favor of privatized accounts, and to make marriage a matter of private contract rather than government licensing.
But these efforts, noble though they may be, are not getting any traction. As far as I know, no state is embroiled in a legislative battle about any of these things, and neither is the federal government. The battle is elsewhere.
The battle is being fought for equality within the construct of existing legal and quasi-legal structures, largely around the question of marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships, and the effect of differential treatment of straight couples and gay/lesbian couples with respect to those questions.
And, since you raise the issue, I want to note that the primary driver of “government involvement in LGBT people’s lives” is the relentless effort of social conservatives, aided and abetted by Republican elected officials, to treat LGBT citizens differently than straight citizens — efforts to enact the FMA, resistance to repeal of Section 3 of DOMA, resistance to DADT repeal and efforts to reinstate DADT and/or defund repeal, resistance to marriage equality and efforts to repeal marriage equality where it exists, resistance to civil unions and domestic partnerships and efforts to repeal civil unions and domestic partnerships in states with them, and so on. (We don’t need to get to the “re-criminalize sodomy” planks that social conservatives put in three state Republican Party platforms, because those planks are just social conservatives blowing it out their collective asses.)
I ask you, considered against that backdrop of direct interference in our lives, and the pervasive effects of that interference in our lives, what difference does it make, really, that gay conservatives want to replace social security with privatized accounts, accounts that can be “freely inheritable”, over the course of the next twenty years when Section 3 of DOMA blocks legally married couples in five states from being treated as spouses for the purpose of survivor social security benefits? What difference does it make, really, that gay conservatives champion the “Fair Tax”, something that will almost certainly never be realized, when Section 3 of DOMA forces the IRS to ban legally married couples in five states from filing jointly? What difference does it make, really, that gay conservatives want to eliminate government licensing of marriage, when we know that isn’t going to happen?
Gay conservatives, by refusing to confront social conservatives within the Republican Party and focusing instead on issues that are dreams for the future, and in the case of eliminating civil marriage, a pipe dream, have largely removed themselves from the battle that is actually being fought.
With respect to inadequate coverage of gay conservatives in the LGBT press, you are, or have been, I believe, a journalist. In that context, let me ask you this: If you have limited space for coverage of LGBT issues, are you going to devote that space to the struggles over civil marriage in California, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Hampshire and, soon, New York, all of which are current and hard-fought, or you going to devote that space to a theoretical discussion of whether or not civil marriage should exist?
As I said, I don’t read the Advocate enough to have a feel for their coverage, but I wouldn’t entirely discount the idea that their editors are simply making a distinction between what is current and what is not, what is relevant and what is not, and what is important and what is not. I would not be too quick to assume bias.
posted by Jorge on
Gay conservatives, by refusing to confront social conservatives within the Republican Party and focusing instead on issues that are dreams for the future, and in the case of eliminating civil marriage, a pipe dream, have largely removed themselves from the battle that is actually being fought.
Seems to me that between engaging Ann Coutler at its inaugural event (which itself caused an issue between Coulter and World Net Daily), and having some ire raised its way at both CPACs it attended, GOProud has devoted at least enough time to engage in a minor skirmish or two. That’s more than enough if you think battle against social conservatives is unavoidable. What you’re really complaining about is that, in effect, GOProud does not consider the fight against social conservatives to be the number one priority. Neither do I, and right or wrong, I think gays are entitled to have differences of opinion.
[from article] Haven’t the last two years of total Democratic domination in Washington proved that the recycled stories and tired headlines of how wonderful Democrats have been on LGBT issues are wrong?
And just about every other issue as well.
posted by Tom on
Gays have many differences of opinion, and should. Wherever two or three are gathered together, there will be difference of opinion, and that goes for gays as well as straights.
The question isn’t whether or not gay conservatives should advance a different “agenda” — Fair Tax versus Income Tax, or PRA verus SS, for example — but why the gay media doesn’t spend much time covering “the efforts of gay conservatives working to limit government’s involvement in LGBT people’s lives”.
My suggestion — and it is only that — is that the primary reason that gay conservatives are not getting ink is that gay conservatives have not engaged in the fight over CM/CU/DP, one way or the other.
In my view, as long as gay conservatives stay aloof from the CM/CU/DP battles being fought across the country (in roughly a dozen states as we speak), gay conservatives are not going to get a lot of press, for the simple reason that what they are doing, important or not, is not the focus of the fight right now.
Think of it this way, Jorge: I am a strong advocate of publicized concealed carry by gays and lesbians, and am in the process of organizing a group that will arm, train and publicize the fact that we are armed and carrying in parades, newspapers, public events and so on when Wisconsin joins the ranks of (one hopes) “shall issue” concealed carry states later this year. But I recognize that the issue, however important, is marginal, compared to the fight over repeal of Wisconsin’s Domestic Partner Registry. The fight over the DPR will get the press because the issue is more important to more LGBT people than is concealed carry; concealed carry will not. That’s just the way it is. Media reports on what is timely and relevant.
I think that’s why most of the issues being advanced by gay conservatives aren’t getting much press. Fair Tax might or might not be important in the long run, but the issue is not being fought anywhere right now (Can you think of a single state in which Fair Tax is a hot issue?), so it isn’t going to get much press.
Notice where gay conservatives got press this year. LCR’s DADT lawsuit got press, and the social conservative uproar over GOProud/CPAC got press. The two stories were both timely and relevant — LCR because DADT repeal was a fight within Congress and GOProudCPAC because the press understands that unless and until someone calls out and faces down social conservatives within the Republican Party, the party will remain the “Knights of Ni!” in the CM/CU/DP fight.
If GOProud were to take a clear stand, one way or the other, in the CM/CU/DP fight, and start acting on that stand, whatever it was, it would get press. Count on it.
posted by Jorge on
The fight over the DPR will get the press because the issue is more important to more LGBT people than is concealed carry
Media and the public certainly are classic at misplacing priorities.
My suggestion — and it is only that — is that the primary reason that gay conservatives are not getting ink is that gay conservatives have not engaged in the fight over CM/CU/DP, one way or the other.
That’s the whole point. Those are not the priorities of a significant segment of the gay population. There is a broad cross-section of gays for whom day to day life is more important than gay politics. This is not represented in any of the mainstream media, so one would reasonably respect that the gay publications would be ones to get a handle on it. It’s those kind of people that GOProud and other powers among gay conservatives try to represent. I think without a strong moderate core such attempts are doomed to be flank movements.
Now in recent years with the anti-gay marriage backlash the activists have seen some success at integrating people’s day to day concerns with their (the activists’) political goals. But times are changing. This is the age of Obama, a liberal president of national stagnation and economic control. It’s an age seeing increasing acceptance of gays on a personal and social level but extreme ambivalence toward accepting gays as legal equals to straights. So it makes perfect sense to take a serious look at those groups and individuals, both gay and straight, who are born from and changing with these times. That means the right.
posted by Tom on
That’s the whole point. Those are not the priorities of a significant segment of the gay population. There is a broad cross-section of gays for whom day to day life is more important than gay politics.
That’s always been true, Jorge, and it always will be.
But day-to-day life is different for different segments of the gay population.
I was, for example, focused on raising four kids for much of my adult life, and the issues involved in raising kids — setting up the legal mechanisms under which my partner (who was not allowed to adopt) could stand in for me with respect to schools, doctors, hospitals and so on when I was out of town on business (typically three or four days a week) — are directly tied up with marriage equality. I recognize that those of us raising kids are a minority (about fifth of gay couples, a third of lesbian couples), but that was my day-to-day life for most of my life, as it is for any parent. It is because of that history that I fight in that arena.
For other gays and lesbians — those in the military, for example — DADT repeal was, perhaps, the highest priority. DADT repeal is also a minority concern, because only about 20% of gay men are veterans, and a small percentage (a very small percentage) of that 20% are now actively serving. But that doesn’t change the importance of that issue to the day-to-day life of those serving or principle that “equal means equal” should apply to military service as well as civilian life.
Career issues (different in my day, when out gays and lesbians were routinely denied partnership in a law firm that now has a 100% HCR rating) were important to gays and lesbians my age in a way that they may no longer be as important for younger gays and lesbians, but the employment discrimination is not absent, even still. I know out gay and lesbian couples who face “glass ceilings”, whose stars will not rise as fast and as far as they would otherwise, and I know employers who are willing to hire gays and lesbians, but only under a version of DADT. Work remains to be done.
Financial and tax policies also impact the day-to-day life of many gays and lesbians. For example, current law diverts hundreds of thousands of dollars from my estate into taxes which would not be paid if we were married. That’s a lot of money. Mine is an atypical case, but DOMA Section 3 has a real, day-to-day effect on less affluent gay and lesbian survivors under Social Security, and inheritance laws treating partners as “legal strangers” has a similar effect for many gay and lesbian couples.
These are just a few examples. But I think that the examples point out that “day-to-day life” and “equal means equal” intersect for gays and lesbians in ways that may not have the immediacy of “What’s for dinner?” but are important nonetheless.
This is not represented in any of the mainstream media, so one would reasonably respect that the gay publications would be ones to get a handle on it. It’s those kind of people that GOProud and other powers among gay conservatives try to represent. I think without a strong moderate core such attempts are doomed to be flank movements.
The day-to-day concerns of straight people are largely ignored by the mainstream media, too. The mainstream media, with ten-second news cycles, largely focuses on the dramatic and the entertaining. And CM/CU/DP certainly creates more than enough drama to go around, which is why it gets the press.
Now in recent years with the anti-gay marriage backlash the activists have seen some success at integrating people’s day to day concerns with their (the activists’) political goals. But times are changing. This is the age of Obama, a liberal president of national stagnation and economic control. It’s an age seeing increasing acceptance of gays on a personal and social level but extreme ambivalence toward accepting gays as legal equals to straights. So it makes perfect sense to take a serious look at those groups and individuals, both gay and straight, who are born from and changing with these times. That means the right.
Jorge, backlash is nothing new. Dade County passed a rather innocuous non-discrimination ordinance back in the 1970’s, and the next thing anyone knew, Ronald Reagan was having to fight off Anita Bryant in California, where she was trying to get gay and lesbian teachers fired by referendum. Boulder and a few other Colorado communities passed non-discrimination ordinaces, and the next thing anyone knew, Romer v. Evans was in SCOTUS. Backlash goes on and on, and never stops.
It won’t stop, ever, for that matter. A determined minority simply cannot accept the idea that gays and lesbians are citizens of the United States, and as such, have a right to equal treatment under the law. They, like the poor, will always be with us. But they are becoming a smaller segment of the population, and marginalized, for all the noise they make.
I look at “backlash” and “ambivalence” from a lifetime’s perspective.
When I came into adulthood, in the mid-1960’s, gay couples I knew were summarily dismissed from college for homosexuality. Sodomy was criminalized in every state but Illinois. I remember raids on the bars, routine arrests and all the rest. I saw friends tossed out of jobs. I lived through the worst of the AIDS years, attending funeral after funeral while the Reagan administration treated HIv/AIDS like a political third rail. I lived through the days when politicians wouldn’t meet with us or accept donations from us. And so on. That’s all changed, despite the backlash and fierce opposition at each step of the way.
As I look back, I remind myself of what John Rechy wrote thirty years ago:
Rechy was writing in disgust, but I think the right-wing attacks on CM/CU/DP have brought “the silent rich, the cozy students, the “quiet” couples” into the fight. We are at a different place now. But one truth remains: We have made gains because we fought to make the gains, not because generous straights gave them to us. The fight goes on.
The point of all of this, the bottom line, is that I don’t expect CM/CU/DP to be important to you, or expect you to work on it. But pick an issue and work on it, whatever it is.
If concealed carry is your issue, then work to bring your state from wherever it now is to “no-permit carry”, arm yourself, join the NRA and get properly trained, start a Pink Pistols group in your area, and publicize the fact that gays and lesbians are armed. It would have a cautionary effect on potential bashers, believe me, to know that they might end up dead.
What I see is that for all the backlash and “ambivalence”, we are little by slowly winning over the American people. I told an “activist” college student from town a couple of years back that I hoped that by the time his children were in college, gay and lesbian kids would just be “college students”. I think that will happen.
But don’t try to tell me that “equal means equal” doesn’t apply to your day-to-day life.
Would you accept a law that banned gays and lesbians from owning firearms, but permitted straights to do so? would you accept a law that taxed gays and lesbians at a higher rate than straights? (Hint: That’s pretty much the current law …) Would you accept a law that criminalized oral sex for gays and lesbians, but not straights?
However much disdain you may have for “activists”, I think you should become one.
posted by BobN on
Ronald Reagan was having to fight off Anita Bryant in California, where she was trying to get gay and lesbian teachers fired by referendum.
Harvey Milk and a whole lot of leftists fought off Anita Bryant along with quite a few gay Republicans — LCR was born out of that fight. Ronald Reagan weighed in in the last two weeks of the campaign with some comments and an editorial in LA Herald Examiner. Don’t get me wrong, his support was very important, though it was probably the last time he stood up for gay people.
Whether Reagan’s support was crucial is hard to say. The initiative fell 58% to 41%. Without him (should I capitalize that?), we might have lost, we might have squeaked by. Hard to say. What is obviously true is that Reagan’s later embrace of the religious rights turned back gay rights by a generation. So let’s not give him more credit than he is due.
posted by Tom on
Two notes:
(1) In the truth is stranger than fiction department, a retread of Romer v. Evans is playing out in Montana as we speak.
(2) I think that Reagan’s opposition to the initiative was important to the result, because it defused the liberal/conservative divide that pro-initiative groups were trying to use as a definitional web. My question about Reagan, though, is not what would have happened had he been on the other side, but what the hell happened to him in subsequent years? As you note, BobN, this was the last pro-gay position he took in public for the rest of his life, and I’d say that it was worse than that — he invited Anita & Company to make their agenda the party’s agenda over the strenuous objections of at least a few other respected conservatives, like Goldwater.
posted by BobN on
but what the hell happened to him in subsequent years?
The embrace of the religious right was a strategic decision, one richly rewarded by three decades of conservative success. Was it the ethical decision? No. Was it moral? Certainly not in my eyes. But is sure was practical. Look how well it has paid off. Without the culture war over abortion and gay rights, we wouldn’t be turning back the New Deal. It wouldn’t even be on the agenda. The GOP would look like the Tories and this country wouldn’t be nearly as dysfunctional as it now is.
posted by BobN on
I forgot to add that I don’t think a lot “happened” to Reagan to make him change direction. This is a man who went from being a union man to being a union buster. The right likes to see him (Him) as a man of principle. It’s a myth, even a lie. He was a politician and, sadly, good at it.
posted by Jorge on
Tom: First, I take what you say very seriously and if we differ, I think it’s mostly in nuance and interpretation.
But don’t try to tell me that “equal means equal” doesn’t apply to your day-to-day life.
I wouldn’t think of it. But who gets to define those terms?
However much disdain you may have for “activists”, I think you should become one.
Oh, no, is it that time of year again, is my vacation over?
I think I’ll delay that a bit and finish reading that DA/DT Pentagon study since there’s nothing major going on right now. Interesting line from that study that stuck with me: “Tell him if he hits on me I’ll kick his ass.” But you know, Leviticus doesn’t contain any prohibitions against men hitting on men. I think I’d like to preach on this with my co-workers a bit. Times are changing and there needs to be some kind of example set that meets the needs of all people. And I really should get to writing that letter to Obama.
posted by Houndentenor on
I can’t remember the last time I read The Advocate. Obviously there are Democrats who give Dems a free pass with regards to gay issues. However, to claim that no gay people complained that Obama, Reid and Pelosi were dragging their feet on DADT and ENDA is either ignorance or an outright lie. At the same time why do we find GOProud endorsing politicians who oppose any rights for gay people.
It’s all well and good to want to separate civil marriage from the religious sacrament of marriage, but the recent bills (Indiana and Wyoming?) would ban any partnership rights to same sex couples. Maybe in a few blue states you can get civil partnerships in lieu of marriage, but those are the states where we will have full marriage equality by the end of the decade anyway. Why should we offer up a compromise that is sure to be rejected? I know that’s how Democrats do things, but I’m sick of it. Let the social conservatives offer a compromise like that and we can accept or reject it.
posted by Jimmy on
When a few individuals here and there show a hint of common decency, that’s not news. What would be newsworthy is when that behavior becomes a trend. All across the country where the GOP has retaken power, they have pursued their bigoted, anti-equality agenda. So, there is no new narrative, just the same ol’ story.
posted by BobN on
its lack of coverage of John Bolton’s support for “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal and gay marriage
Yes, not since Sampson pulled down the pillars of the temple has the firmament been so rattled as when what’s-his-name poked his head up with his utterly insignificant, ex post facto opinion.
posted by BobN on
Ever since the media acquisition frenzy of the 90s, the gay press is but a shadow of what it once was. Yes, it’s glitzier now. And goodness knows the quality of the paper it’s printed on has improved, but the content has been deeply compromised. Lefty? Hardly. So many “conservatives” seem to confuse reality with liberalism. Maybe they should start their own rag. I’m sure Meaghan McCain would subscribe.
posted by PIL on
The Advocate is MSNBC-light, I read them everyday and it’s true they rarely say anything bad against the DNC and treat gay republicans as retarded children.
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