These days, it's pretty hard to walk the streets of a California city without seeing same-sex couples - shopping, strolling, holding hands, sometimes accompanied by children. What used to be called, self-consciously, "public displays of affection" are now merely public displays of ordinary family life. For gay folks, then, it is all the more stinging an irony that the one place where same-sex couples are invisible is in the advertising war over Proposition 8.
Proposition 8, of course, is the constitutional ballot initiative on whether to retain or reject same-sex marriage, which was legalized by the state Supreme Court in May. Given California's power to shape national trends, the stakes for both sides could not be much higher. But given the sheer size of the state's media market, TV advertising could not be much more expensive. For both sides, the premium is on common-denominator messaging that appeals to the largest possible number of swing voters while causing a minimum of political backlash.
The need to walk that tightrope helps explain why the actual subjects of next month's initiative, gay couples, were "inned" by the "No on 8" campaign's ads. (Full disclosure: I am a "No on 8" donor.) One ad, for example, features a gray-haired straight couple. "Our gay daughter and thousands of our fellow Californians will lose the right to marry," says mother Julia Thoron.
A subsequent ad, all text with voice-over narration, mentions marriage only once ("Regardless of how you feel about marriage, it's wrong to treat people differently under the law") and never uses the phrase "gay marriage" or even the word "gay." Just as oblique was a spot, released Wednesday, in which state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell reassures viewers that "Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage." A casual viewer could have come away from these ads puzzled as to exactly what right thousands of Californians might be about to lose.
Asked about the absence of gay couples, a senior "No on 8" official told KPIX-TV in San Francisco that "from all the knowledge that we have and research that we have, [those] are not the best images to move people." Children, also, were missing; showing kids with same-sex parents could too easily backfire.
The pro-Proposition 8 forces, by contrast, featured a child prominently in their TV advertising: A schoolgirl comes home with a book called "King and King" and announces, to her mother's consternation, that she learned in school that "I can marry a princess." Another ad attacks overweening judges, mocks San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for saying, "It's going to happen whether you like it or not," and goes on to claim that gay marriage could cause people to be sued for their beliefs and churches to lose their tax exemption.
Notice, again, that gay couples were missing, though for a different reason. Nowadays, swing voters are more leery of anti-gay discrimination than of same-sex couples. So the "yes" ads changed the subject, focusing on alleged (and disputed) follow-on effects of same-sex marriage rather than on the thing itself. If homosexuals can get married, look what else might happen! Arrogant judges, politicians and school bureaucrats will harass churches, torment dissenters and inappropriately sexualize education!
What might such ads show? Well, one might feature someone like my friend Brian, who married his partner, Doug, on Saturday. They already had a domestic partnership, but that could not begin to match the power of marriage, sealed before parents and friends in a ceremony in San Francisco. "It's how you say this is forever and do it publicly," Brian says. "It's very different from getting a form notarized at Mailboxes Etc."
An ad might show Brian driving Doug to the hospital and sitting at his bedside after surgery. Marriage is unique because of the high social expectations that go with it. Chief among those expectations is that spouses will do whatever is necessary to care for each other - which is valuable, because census data show that almost a third of California's gay couples have only one wage-earner, and almost a fifth have at least one disabled partner (about the same, by the way, as for straight married couples). By supporting and reinforcing the care-giving commitment, each marriage, gay no less than straight, creates social capital for the whole community.
Brian and Doug don't have kids, but a fourth of California's gay couples do, according to census data. An ad might show some of those kids watching as their parents, previously denied marriage, tie the knot. For children, no other arrangement matches the security and stability afforded by married parents, because no other arrangement confers comparable status and social support. If they could cast ballots, how many of the more than 50,000 children being raised in California's same-sex households would vote to deprive themselves of married parents?
Or an ad might feature a gay teenager celebrating his parents' 20th wedding anniversary and dreaming of his own someday. There are countless gay youths for whom the prospect of marriage will be so much more tangible if it is embraced by the nation's largest state. The breakthrough effect of same-sex marriage is not on the mature gay couples who can finally get marriage licenses, important though that is; it is the effect on generations of gay kids who will no longer grow up assuming that their love must separate them from life's most essential institution.
Keeping marriage available to gay couples in California, and giving it the blessings of a popular majority, would be a game-changer for gay culture. It would signal that the transformation from a pariah culture in the 1950s, to a promiscuity culture in the 1970s, and then to a commitment culture in the AIDS era and beyond, has taken its last and greatest step: to a culture of family.
Ellen DeGeneres, the comedian and TV personality, made an unofficial anti-Proposition 8 ad calling her marriage "the happiest day of my life." For the most part, however, you have seen and heard least about those who benefit most from gay marriage. That does not mean, however, you shouldn't think about them.
4 Comments for “California’s Invisible Gays”
posted by Hello on
Look out, California, the Religious Right is bringing out the big guns!
That is, James Dobson of the Focus on the Family broadcasting empire has accepted an invitation to attend a prayer rally in San Diego this Saturday as the Religious Right?s last attempt to pass Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that would deprive gays and lesbians of the right to marry in California.
The day-long rally ? it?s really more about politics than prayer ? will bring together supporters of Proposition 8 and Pastor Lou Engle, leader of TheCall movement. Promotional materials say the event will feature, ?Corporate prayer and fasting for the protection of traditional marriage and the soul of our nation ? through the upcoming elections and beyond.?
If Californians believe in church-state separation, they ought to vote against Proposition 8 and tell Dobson, Engle and Company to back off.
http://blog.au.org/2008/10/30/california-dreamin-dobson-religious-right-allies-answer-theocratic-call-in-golden-state/
posted by randy on
Thanks for the article. I too am troubled by this lack of visibility. It seems the No on prop 8 ads will say anything EXCEPT the words gay or lesbian. They will show everyone except an actual gay or lesbian couple.
And that hurts our cause. First, it gives opponents ammo to say, see there really is a hidden agenda because they are hiding so much.
But more importanly, what if we lose? The premise of this campaign should be: Win. But if we lose, lay the groundwork for a win later on. And we lay that groundwork by being out and proud. Right now, everyone rightly thinks we are ashamed of ourselves and need to rely upon the kindness of strangers, er, heteros, to give us our rights.
The public needs to see gay couples acting like everyone else — raising kids, going to the supermarket, paying bills, picking up kids at soccer practice — to see that we are not trying to destroy western civilization.
All the ads are good, but they boil down to this: Please don’t vote yes. Please vote no. Why? Because that wouldn’t be nice to a certain group of people that we won’t mention.
That’s just not good enough. And damn the focus groups. Sometimes you have to be a leader, not a follower.
posted by Randy on
You know, we went through all this before. In the 2004 election, we had Cheryl Jacques as president of the HRC. And every time she would get on tv, some one would ask her her thoughts on gay marriage. She would blithly dismiss the question and say that Americans don’t want to talk about that, they want to talk about health care and the economy, and lost jobs, and the war on terror. Then the commentator would ask her opponent about gay marriage, who would then rip into how it will destroy the country.
For god’s sakes, we pleaded, answer the question! Stand up to the religious right! People WANT to hear your arguments, but you just keep brushing them off. Jacques excuse was that the focus groups told her that people would rather talk about health care than gay marriage.
Well, we lost badlly that election, and shortly afterwards, she was given a well deserved boot from the HRC.
Have we learned nothing? If WE don’t stand up and say there is nothing wrong with being gay, how do we expect our heteros friends to do that? If we are afraid of using the word gay (oooo — it might offend a few people), then we can’t complain when the right takes that word and makes it sound evil.
We shouldn’t be trying to say that if prop 8 fails, then kids won’t be taught about gay marriage. On the contrary, we should say that if marriage is legal, everyone will learn that gay marriage exists. And what the hell is wrong with that?! Are we really so ashamed of ourselves that we AGREE kids shouldn’t learn about gay marriage? yet that is what our position is. It’s insane.
posted by Reality Check on
People need to balance their idealistic views with reality. Yeah, it would be wonderful if straight people accept gay marriages as natural but unfortunately their religious leaders tell them otherwise. The reality is many heterosexuals still see gay as wrong even though we don’t think so. The gay community can’t really be aggressive with their political agenda because conservatives end up using it (such as required gay awareness in kindergarten classes) as ammunition to scare Christian couples. Americans in general don’t like talking about sex with their children and you can’t expect social change overnight. Since we are only 10% of the population, we have to have better strategies in influencing voters, instead of panicking them by being aggressive in areas that involve their children.