The Gay Marriage Ruling -- A Sporting Event
In reading the coverage of the New York Supreme Court's recent ruling on gay marriage, one problem leaps up - no one seemed to
find it necessary to report on what gays and lesbians think of the ruling.
By DEBORAH EMIN
If you read most of the mainstream press’ coverage of the New York State Court of Appeal’s recent ruling on gay marriage, it is framed
just like all other issues of power and privilege, as if we lived in a world of perpetual sporting events. Whether the arena (the media) is
hosting the month-long World Cup or the issue of gay marriage, what seems to matter is who wins and who loses.
By the end of June, the press in New York, in particular The New York Times, was abuzz with anticipation of the Court of Appeal’s ruling.
The media odds makers began their countdown and the taking of bets.
Because the media see all issues as a contest, the language they employ to describe the results has become almost meaningless
(see NY Times article “Meaning of ‘Normal’ is at the Heart of Gay Marriage Ruling”). The Times’ reporters probably thought they had an
inside track to this one. Yet, they could not refrain from setting up the two opposing teams, in their view, the two judicial sides of the
argument.
One problem leaps up, though, with this type of coverage: Where are all the gay people? If you read enough of the coverage of this story,
and not just by the Times but by progressive magazines and out of state newspapers, no one seemed to find it necessary to report on
what gays and lesbians think of the ruling or of what the gay media has said.
For example, in Gay City News, one of the leading gay weekly papers in New York City, a fiery editorial by Paul Schindler as well as a
detailed wrap up of the entire case appeared immediately upon the announcement of the ruling. In addition, a long legal analysis by
Arthur Leonard explained what the precedents were and what the bases were that the court used in issuing its ruling. None of this
appeared in the mainstream press.
If you were looking to see what the man or woman on the street opinions were, you were told via publications like amMetro what
heterosexuals thought of the ruling.
Why was the population most seriously affected by the ruling absent from the reporting of it as well as absent in their response to it?
As to the ruling itself, if one can get past the tortured logic of the majority opinion (and here I am indebted to Arthur Leonard’s column for
explaining the precedents the majority used in formulating its opinion), it seems to be based on a number of illogical and debased
claims having to do mainly with child rearing. If you can believe this (it is a stretch of the imagination to do so), a good percentage of the
rational for the refusal to find in favor of the plaintiffs is that the court thought it necessary to protect the children born to heterosexuals
who had had some “accidents” like broken condoms or drunken orgies that had resulted in a pregnancy. As anyone, gay or straight,
might ask: what does this have to do with a gay couple or a lesbian couple marrying?
Another one of the more ludicrous and seemingly absurd findings of these judges was that if a heterosexual person found him or her in
the position of wanting to marry someone of the same sex, they too would not be allowed to marry and thus, the law does not
discriminate against gays and lesbians.
In its haste to get its ruling out, and perhaps not so co-incidentally shortly after the Gay Pride March, where thousands of members of the
LGBT community strutted, puffed and outrageously performed, the court seemed determined to protect children of heterosexual
couples. It dismissed the findings of scientific studies that showed that little difference exists between the health and well being of
children raised in either heterosexual or gay and lesbian households, showing a willingness to deny science that doesn't fit its
prejudices that is similar to our current president's. In a curious way, it needed to rely on its “intuition” to determine how children fare in
same-sex households, rather than on the findings of the American Pediatric Association, among others.
Therein we see the twisted logic, or illogic, of the majority trying to find a “nice” way of saying that they are offended by the idea of gays
and lesbians marrying. And of course, they can’t say that, because that would be discrimination, which is what this law suit was about to
begin with. The mainstream media, too, seems uncomfortable, but offered a bland and tepid endorsement of gay marriage.
In the end, though, one last set of questions remains: why were gays and lesbians not included in the press coverage of the ruling? And
where is that decision made, by whom and for what reason?
