“Change” — a word portending positive transformation — has become so ubiquitous this election year it has lost its luster of promise.
Nonetheless, a movement for change is afoot and NLGJA and its members should seize the moment to make a contribution toward changing hearts and minds about LGBT people.
How? NLGJA should immediately undertake a concerted effort to educate journalists, pundits and pollsters that LGBT people are a “people” and not merely a social “issue” coupled with beliefs about abortion or gun ownership.
This effort would be in compliance with NLGJA’s own goal to “promote the principles of inclusion and diversity within our ranks.” Indeed, in NLGJA’s guides for journalists, there are many references to “gay people,” which underscores the idea that we are a minority.
Will there be push-back from those who insist LGBT people do not fit the legal definition of the term “minority?” Probably. But more and more scholars and legal professionals are breaking with tradition and finding ways to define gay people as “a distinct social minority” for the purpose of a specific case or instance.
Consider Gregory Herek’s description of gays as a minority in his book "Gays and the Military: Joseph Steffan Versus the United States." Herek writes:
“Lesbians and gay men differ from other minorities in important respects. Nevertheless, they can reasonably be viewed a minority group because they manifest four important characteristics by which minority groups are defined. First, gay people compromise a subordinate segment within a larger complex state society. Second, they manifest characteristics that are held in low esteem by the dominant segments of society. Third, they are self-consciously bound together as a community by virtue of these characteristics. Finally, they receive differential treatment based upon these characteristics, ranging from discrimination to assault to victimization.”
The concept of gay people as a distinct group is seeping into popular culture and has the potential to impact public policy. A Jan. 14 press release for scholar Aaron Belkin’s new study,"Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Does the Gay Ban Undermine the Military's Reputation?" concludes that the policy harms the military’s reputation.
“First, it prompts journalists to criticize the armed forces while attracting almost no favorable coverage,” the press release says. “Belkin and his staff contacted 140 conservative, mostly small-town newspapers which had endorsed President Bush in the 2004 elections, and found that only 11 percent of the editorial staffs of these papers support ‘don't ask, don't tell.’ At least 60 editorials opposing the policy have appeared during the past five years, while not a single pro-ban editorial was published during that time.”
This clearly connotes that there is more to be explored than the simple equation that the Republican presidential contenders think the policy is working while the Democratic contenders say they will repeal it, though with little explanation as to how.
And now that environmentalist, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore has come out in favor of marriage for same-sex couples,
the candidates will have to once again square their positions with a changing cultural dynamic.
But there is still much work to do among journalists. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s tortured appearance at the Logo/Human Rights Campaign presidential forum last August provides a useful illustration of this. When Richardson told singer/panelist Melissa Etheridge that sexual orientation was a “choice,” gays in the pressroom gasped, alerting the straight media that something important had just occurred. Indeed, that moment put a critical crimp in Richardson’s presidential campaign.
The simplest and quickest way to effect this change is to pressure pollsters and the mainstream media to start including “Are you gay or lesbian?” — the question they use now, when they do — in their routine polling. It is also imperative that they include the response in the demographic category, not among the “issues.”
In politics, numbers matter. Numbers equal accessibility and a degree of power. LGBT Democrats are the second largest and most loyal voting block, according to DNC Chair Howard Dean. When polls revealed that gays voted 73 percent for Antonio Villaraigosa in his first run for mayor, he courted the LGBT vote second to the Latino vote.
And yet, gay people are rarely or never mentioned in the catalogue of minority groups, and if there is a reference to gays, it is to “gay rights,” as if those rights would be conferred upon a collection of individuals, not a distinct social minority that the federal government officially designates as “second class citizens” through “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act.
Additionally, not counting the LGBT vote might yield more New Hampshire-like surprises in the future. In 2000, we learned that 11 percent of the Democratic vote (according to an Los Angeles Times exit poll) were LGBT voters. One might imagine that the voting and visible LGBT population easily has grown over the past eight years.
To top it off, another potentially major story is the new Inclusion Rule for delegate selection to the Democratic National Convention, which is part of Dean’s 50-state strategy. Garry Shay, a DNC super-delegate and lead chair of the Rules Committee for the California Democratic Party, wrote the new rule.
“The Democratic Party, through its Affirmative Action and Inclusion Programs in Delegate Selection has significantly increased the number of states which will be setting numeric goals for LGBT Americans to attend the convention from 13 in 2004 to 45, and possibly more, in 2008,” Shay said last year. “All 56 states and territories will be seeking to have LGBT representation based upon their presence in the Democratic Electorate. This increased number of States who have actual numeric goals will certainly increase interest in the community at large as more and more of our members become active in the political process. It is one more step toward full inclusion in the American Dream.”
If the Democratic presidential contest goes to the convention without a pre-selected candidate, those delegates could make a difference.
Eric Bauman, chair of the L.A. County Democratic Party and special assistant to Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, says the LGBT community is part of the national wave of change inspired by seven years of right-wing hatred under George W. Bush.
“With LGBT voters making up a significant portion of the vote in California, New York and many other places across the nation, pollsters need to remember to ask the question about sexual orientation if they want a truly reflective picture of the electorate. In places like California, the LGBT vote exceeds several other commonly polled demographics, such as the Jewish and Asian Pacific Islander communities. Ignoring the LGBT vote undermines the public’s understanding of this polling data, especially when exit polls reveal the LGBT vote to be anywhere from 4 percent to 11 percent of the vote, a more than statistically significant fact.”
Gay Republicans also have a stake in this election, as many are part of a “moderate” coalition that includes former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson who have been telling the religious conservatives dominating the GOP: “It’s my party, too.”
Scott Schmidt, a gay Republican who blogs at BoiFromTroy and contributes to Spot-on.com, says, “With a divided Republican electorate, a small handful of votes can effect an election. If gay Republicans constitute even one, two or three percent of GOP primary voters, and they rally around one candidate, they can tip the scales, especially in specific California Congressional districts or more liberal winner-take-all States like New York."
“It is baffling and increasingly infuriating that most if not all major pollsters do not ask sexual orientation, let alone gender identity,” says NLGJA member Bob Witck, CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications.
Witeck notes that pollsters are afraid that participants might find the question offensive. But since 2000, Witeck-Combs has worked with the Harris Poll (through Harris Interactive) and conducted conservatively over 200 studies that include LGBT samples.
“We have some degree of confidence the adult sample of LGBT adults is probably between 6 percent and 7 percent, and perhaps as
high as 6.7 percent on average. In California, and in urban America such as Los Angeles, for instance, that figure must be considerably higher,” Witeck says.
The studies conducted by gay demographer Gary Gates at The Williams Institute on same-sex households and LGBT populations “gives us evidence in major cities that the numbers are easily within striking distance of 10 percent and sometimes higher in cities such as Washington, DC and San Francisco,” Witeck says.
But the reporting on those studies does not extrapolate that the same-sex couples and LGBT population indicate a “distinct social minority.”
Finally, NLGJA should consider this opportunity for change a responsibility to the larger LGBT community. Erik Resnick, a reporter for the Gay People’s Chronicle in Ohio, recently posted a plea on a progressive listserv that summarizes the view of many in the LGBT community. Here’s an excerpt:
“Look, everyone in the LGBT community seems to be looking for where to place blame for the big three's lousy positions on LGBT rights, when really, the blame is ours. All three of them have carefully crafted positions to make LGBT people think they are cool with us, and the rest of the electorate know that they are not too cool. Stop feigning indignation and surprise when they don‘t do right, and start calling them on it,” Resnick wrote.
"All of the ‘big three’ are lawyers, and all of them know that equality is not a term up for debate. It's either equal or it's separate. All of them know that their positions on matters of LGBT equality cannot be squared with Brown v. Board of Education or its progeny. Worse, all of them know that if they were to speak of any other minority group — and I mean any, except maybe Mexicans and Muslims — the way they speak of us, they would be labeled bigots and pushed to the fringe."
“I cover news for a GLBT newspaper that no one really cares about because we're not on a coast and have no budget,” Resnick continued. “Few care about what I say about this, or any major movement issue. But some of you on this list are important opinion makers and movers. You have a responsibility to do as much as possible for all of us. Stop giving away our collective community's support to candidates who will not take difficult stands on our behalf and prefer to treat us like battered spouses when things get difficult. Make them take stands, or walk away. We're not going to move forward until you do.”
For NLGJA journalists concerned that pressing for LGBT inclusion in electoral reporting and polling might appear to be too subjective, I commend to you the words of openly gay ABC News Senior Vice President Robert Murphy on the occasion of NLGJA founder Roy Aarons’ death:
"Roy was above all a great journalist whose passion for our profession will always be what comes to mind first when thinking of him," Murphy said. "Personally I will remember him as a mentor and friend who taught us the value of the contribution we could make to our newsrooms as openly gay journalists. He also provided the leadership that gave many of us the courage to join our personal and professional lives. For that we will be forever grateful."
Karen Ocamb is the news editor of IN Los Angeles magazine and has been reporting on the primaries for gaywired.com.
