Covering The Latest Push For A Gay Marriage Amendment
Notice that last part: "little chance of passing." Seemingly every media outlet is stressing the fact that the amendment is an election year political tactic more than a serious effort at getting a constitutional ban. Washington Post political columnist Howard Kurtz addressed the coverage in his online chat today: "…when it comes to a constitutional amendment -- which, by the way, Bush has barely mentioned from his reelection until this week -- the political reality is that it is not going to pass. So I think it's fair to examine the political motives of those who are pushing it as well as those who oppose it," he wrote.
There isn't a lot to say at this point about the actual amendment at this point, is there? We've been down this road before. I do think, as one of Kurtz' questioners pointed out, that the media has generally underplayed the fact that a slim majority of Americans oppose gay marriage. (That doesn't mean, of course, that they support a Constitutional amendment.) I suspect that on this issue many in the national media, who live in relatively gay-friendly cities like New York, side with gay marriage advocates. But one could also argue that they're not that far from typical Americans in the issue, as National Journal's William Powers did in February 2004:
…the coverage of gay marriage has a tentative, muted feeling. As filtered through the mainstream media, gay marriage seems not so much a righteous cause, inherently worthy of our attention and concern, as another strange, colorful chapter in the never-ending "culture war," a phrase that appears over and over in the mainstream coverage. The media, which are normally so good at creating heroes, have not yet given us a gay Rosa Parks or even a gay Gloria Steinem.Let me back up a bit. I stated that there is nothing new about the amendment itself, from the perspective of a journalist. That seems to at least partially explain why the political angle is getting so stressed. But remember that there's nothing new about that, either. Republicans have been using gay marriage as a political issue for a long time – we all remember the anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives in 2004 designed in part to drive up conservative turnout – and every journalist knows it. If the amendment push itself is old news, so is the it's-just-politics angle.Why? Perhaps the story is still too young. But I think it's also about the journalists. A lot of straight mainstream media people, the sort of people who work at national newspapers and TV networks, would probably tell you they support gay marriage, but in a vague this-is-what-people-like-us-believe sort of way. Even in the age of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, gay marriage still makes a lot of heterosexuals, including liberal ones, a bit queasy. If the polls are accurate, I guess this is one way in which journalists actually resemble everyday Americans.
So why is the politics of gay marriage front and center this time around? My guess: Because it's just so damn obvious. For the White House to bring up this issue again, just before an election, with Republicans struggling to hold on the House and Senate, after barely mentioning it since 2004 – well, it's almost insulting, isn't it? Journalists don't like being treated like fools, and it seems like an "enough is enough" factor has seeped into the coverage. They thus aren't giving the amendment even the slim benefit of the doubt they afforded it last time around. The question, then, is to what degree their increased skepticism will make a difference when Americans go to the ballot box in November.