Morality or equality ? Ideological framing in news coverage of gay marriage legitimization

This content analytic study investigated the approaches of two mainstream newspapers—The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune—to cover the gay marriage issue. The study used the Massachusetts legitimization of gay marriage as a dividing point to look at what kinds of specific political or social topics related to gay marriage were highlighted in the news media. The study examined how news sources were framed in the coverage of gay marriage, based upon the newspapers’ perspectives and ideologies. The results indicated that The New York Times was inclined to emphasize the topic of human equality related to the legitimization of gay marriage. After the legitimization, The New York Times became an activist for gay marriage. Alternatively, the Chicago Tribune highlighted the importance of human morality associated with the gay marriage debate. The perspective of the Chicago Tribune was not dramatically influenced by the legitimization. It reported on gay marriage in terms of defending American traditions and family values both before and after the gay marriage legitimization. Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association. Gay marriage has been a controversial issue in the United States, especially since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court officially authorized it. Although the practice has been widely discussed for several years, the acceptance of gay marriage does not seem to be concordant with mainstream American values. This is in part because gay marriage challenges the traditional value of the family institution. In the United States, people’s perspectives of and attitudes toward gay marriage have been mostly polarized. Many people optimistically ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ppan@astate.edu, polinpanpp@gmail.com (P.-L. Pan). 0362-3319/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2010.02.002 P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 631 support gay legal rights and attempt to legalize it in as many states as possible, while others believe legalizing homosexuality may endanger American society and moral values. A number of forces and factors may expand this divergence between the two polarized perspectives, including family, religion and social influences. Mass media have a significant influence on socialization that cultivates individual’s belief about the world as well as affects individual’s values on social issues (Comstock & Paik, 1991). Moreover, news media outlets become a strong factor in influencing people’s perceptions of and attitudes toward gay men and lesbians because the news is one of the most powerful media to influence people’s attitudes toward gay marriage (Anderson, Fakhfakh, & Kondylis, 1999). Some mainstream newspapers are considered as media elites (Lichter, Rothman, & Lichter, 1986). Furthermore, numerous studies have demonstrated that mainstream newspapers would produce more powerful influences on people’s perceptions of public policies and political issues than television news (e.g., Brians & Wattenberg, 1996; Druckman, 2005; Eveland, Seo, & Marton, 2002) Gay marriage legitimization, a specific, divisive issue in the political and social dimensions, is concerned with several political and social issues that have raised fundamental questions about Constitutional amendments, equal rights, and American family values. The role of news media becomes relatively important while reporting these public debates over gay marriage, because not only do the news media affect people’s attitudes toward gays and lesbians by positively or negatively reporting the gay and lesbian issue, but also shape people’s perspectives of the same-sex marriage policy by framing the recognition of gay marriage in the news coverage. The purpose of this study is designed to examine how gay marriage news is described in the news coverage of The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune based upon their divisive ideological framings. 1. Literature review 1.1. Homosexual news coverage over time Until the 1940s, news media basically ignored the homosexual issue in the United States (Alwood, 1996; Bennett, 1998). According to Bennett (1998), of the 356 news stories about gays and lesbians that appeared in Time and Newsweek from 1947 to 1997, the Kinsey report on male sexuality published in 1948 was the first to draw reporters to the subject of homosexuality. From the 1940s to 1950s, the homosexual issue was reported as a social problem. Approximately 60% of the articles described homosexuals as a direct threat to the strength of the U.S. military, the security of the U.S. government, and the safety of ordinary Americans during this period. By the 1960s, the gay and lesbian issue began to be discussed openly in the news media. However, these portrayals were covered in the context of crime stories and brief items that ridiculed effeminate men or masculine women (Miller, 1991; Streitmatter, 1993). In 1963, a cover story, “Let’s Push Homophile Marriage,” was the first to treat gay marriage as a matter of winning legal recognition (Stewart-Winter, 2006). However, this cover story did not cause people to pay positive attention to gay marriage, but raised national debates between punishment and pity of homosexuals. Specifically speaking, although numerous arti632 P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 cles reported before the 1960s provided growing visibility for homosexuals, they were still highly critical of them (Bennett, 1998). In September 1967, the first hard-hitting gay newspaper—the Los Angeles Advocate—began publication. Different from other earlier gay and lesbian publications, its editorial mix consisted entirely of non-fiction materials, including news stories, editorials, and columns (Cruikshank, 1992; Streitmatter, 1993). The Advocate was the first gay publication to operate as an independent business financed entirely by advertising and circulation, rather than by subsidies from a membership organization (Streitmatter, 1995a, 1995b). After the Stonewall Rebellion in June 1969 in New York City ignited the modern phase of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, the number and circulation of the gay and lesbian press exploded (Streitmatter, 1998). Therefore, gay rights were discussed in the news media during the early 1970s. Homosexuals began to organize a series of political actions associated with gay rights, which was widely covered by the news media, while a backlash also appeared against the gay-rights movements, particularly among fundamentalist Christians (Alwood, 1996; Bennett, 1998). Later in the 1970s, the genre entered a less political phrase by exploring the dimensions of the developing culture of gay and lesbian. The news media plumbed the breadth and depth of topics ranging from the gay and lesbian sensibility in art and literature to sex, spirituality, personal appearance, dyke separatism, lesbian mothers, drag queen, leather men, and gay bathhouses (Streitmatter, 1995b). In the 1980s, the gay and lesbian issue confronted a most formidable enemy when AIDS/HIV, one of the most devastating diseases in the history of medicine, began killing gay men at an alarming rate. Accordingly, AIDS/HIV became the biggest gay story reported by the news media. Numerous news media outlets linked the AIDS/HIV epidemic with homosexuals, which implied the notion of the promiscuous gay and lesbian lifestyle. The gays and lesbians, therefore, were described as a dangerous minority in the news media during the 1980s (Altman, 1986; Cassidy, 2000). In the 1990s, issues about the growing visibility of gays and lesbians and their campaign for equal rights were frequently covered in the news media, primarily because of AIDS and the debate over whether the ban on gays in the military should be lifted. The increasing visibility of gay people resulted in the emergence of lifestyle magazines (Bennett, 1998; Streitmatter, 1998). The Out, a lifestyle magazine based in New York City but circulated nationally, led the new phase, since its upscale design and fashion helped attract mainstream advertisers. This magazine, which devalued news in favor of stories on entertainment and fashions, became the first gay and lesbian publication sold in mainstream bookstores and featured on the front page of The New York Times (Streitmatter, 1998). From the late 1990s to the first few years of the 2000s, homosexuals were described as a threat to children’s development as well as a danger to family values in the news media. The legitimacy of same-sex marriage began to be discussed, because news coverage dominated the issue of same-sex marriage more frequently than before (Bennett, 1998). According to Gibson (2004), The New York Times first announced in August 2002 that its Sunday Styles section would begin publishing reports of same-sex commitment ceremonies along with the traditional heterosexual wedding announcements. Moreover, many newspapers joined this trend. Gibson (2004) found that not only the national newspapers, such as The New York Times, but also other regional newspapers, such as the Houston Chronicle and the Seattle Times, reported surprisingly large P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 633 number of news stories about the everyday lives of gays and lesbians, especially since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November 2003 that same-sex couples had the same right to marry as heterosexuals. Previous studies investigated the increased amount of news coverage of gay and lesbian issues in the past six decades, but they did not analyze how homosexuals are framed in the news media in terms of public debates on the gay marriage issue. These studies failed to examine how newspapers report this national debate on gay marriage as well as what kinds of news frames are used in reporting this controversial issue. 1.2. Framing gay and lesbian partnersh