Presswatch/Newsweek Acts Up
Eastland, Terry
Newsweek Acts Up by Terry Eastland I suppose it was inevitable in a presi- dential campaign year focused more than any before upon matters involving homosexuality that one of the major newsweeklies...
...Nor was there any reference to the new reading material finding its way into public elementary schools, such as Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies, which teach the moral acceptability of gay living...
...The American Spectator November 1992 Conservatives argue that if equal employment opportunity laws were to be amended to include sexual orientation, it would create yet another victim group demanding quotas for itself...
...Such reporting might even have allowed the magazine to understand its own poll, wherein support for equal job rights did not translate into approval of homosexual "lifestyles...
...1 n depicting gays as aggrieved victims, Newsweek was merely following the journalistic norm...
...The magazine's exegesis of an unnamed passage from Corinthians (I Corinthians 6: 9-11, evidently) consisted of a single, banal sentence: "Corinthians promises that homosexuals (along with fornicators, idolaters, adulterers and thieves) shall never inherit the kingdom of God...
...Clearly, some voters decried it and thought it would be effective with other voters...
...Throughout, that "struggle for acceptance" was sanitized by Newsweek, with no mention of ACT-UP or Queer Nation or any other of the gay extremist groups...
...0 59...
...Again, it's those reactionary fundamentalists—but wait: Newsweek did not report that the bill would impose penalties even against churches that in their employment decisions discriminate on the basis of "sexual orientation...
...In any event, from the examples Newsweek provided, it would seem that only the religious right has a problem with homosexuality...
...One would think that parents who hold opposing views might themselves be said to feel "under fire," but Newsweek did not present their testimony...
...Is discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation akin to discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, sex, and disability...
...Swallowing the gay activist line, the magazine advised that the bullwhip came at "an opportune moment for the religious right," because "the Berlin wall and the contras had fallen...
...Probably because they're reflecting their paper's editorial views...
...Pete Wilson, under pressure from the fundamentalist wing of the state Republican party, is expected to veto an anti-gay-discrimination bill for the second time in a year...
...In other words, in desperate need of new targets to fuel its paranoia, the right turned to putting gays in their place...
...public policy issues were treated just as tendentiously...
...In short, in the Post's thinking, the words "is not unjust discrimination" are synonymous with support for discrimination—which makes sense if the only conceivable interpretation is that the Vatican victimizes gays...
...Likewise Newsweek's treatment of "domestic partnership laws...
...Most in the news media would concur: on a recent "Good Morning America," Vice President Dan Quayle found himself denying that il was "gay bashing" to say homosexual lifeTerry Eastland is the author, most recently, of Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency (The Free Press...
...But it failed to discuss why the law historically has extended legal and economic advantages to heterosexual marriage and denied them to unmarried heterosexual couples, homosexual couples, and even long-term platonic roommates...
...Voters decry it but think it's effective...
...Newsweek conveyed this much, but like others covering this issue didn't go far enough...
...The Vatican's actual terms were quoted two paragraphs later: "There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the consignment of children to adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or coaches, and in military recruitment...
...Although anti-gay violence has been roundly condemned by religious leaders on the right, Newsweek included none of this abundant testimony...
...Newsweek Acts Up by Terry Eastland I suppose it was inevitable in a presi- dential campaign year focused more than any before upon matters involving homosexuality that one of the major newsweeklies would devote major space to the subject...
...Or that, as the New York Times's religion writer Peter Steinfels recently reported, there's plenty of debate over the issue in mainstream Protestant and Catholic precincts...
...Gays Under Fire" reported, for example (and wrongly, as it turned out), that "California Gov...
...Newsweek evidently didn't even bother to consult its own religion editor, Kenneth Woodward, who could have alerted its writers to what America's churches and synagogues teach about homosexuality...
...Without knowing the reason for this age-old law—to encourage both the economic independence and interdependence of the traditional family unit, presumed to be vital to the transmission of civilization—readers will have no idea why there should be any deep-seated opposition at all to legal sanctioning of homosexual marriage...
...styles are wrong...
...a gang of ten thugs severely beating a gay man—always with the implication that the religious right supports such acts...
...But it's so much easier to abhor the "religious right...
...Newsweek did pause to say where the religious right—simplistically equated with Protestant fundamentalism—got its "anti-gay animus": the Bible...
...Readers weren't informed that Protestant fundamentalist churches are hardly alone in their negative views of homosexuality...
...For starters, take the basic premise: that "gay America's struggle for acceptance" has netted "modest gains" but provoked "a powerful backlash" (no sting left in that cliché) in the form of "a well-coordinated counteroffensive by the religious right...
...Here the magazine did mention some of the practical matters at stake, such as health benefits and inheritance rights...
...58 The American Spectator November 1992 By scanting the role of religion, Newsweek essentially missed the story: namely, that attitudes on homosexuality are more often than not a function of religious belief...
...Emphasis mine...
...In July, for instance, the Washington Post reported on a Vatican statement on homosexuality recently sent to U.S...
...In the current affirmative action climate, as employers become increasingly vulnerable to disparate-impact lawsuits from women and minority workers, there would be nothing to stop gay plaintiffs from acting similarly and charging employment discrimination if they felt their protected group was "underrepresented...
...No less inevitably, Newsweek's eight-page cover story of September 14, "Gays Under Fire," was a thoroughly botched and biased job...
...Ever the organ of progress, Newsweek commented: "Fifty-three percent still don't consider homosexuality `acceptable' behavior...
...Again, why complicate the story line...
...Catholic bishops...
...Why complicate the story line...
...Newsweek also skimmed over a major point of contention concerning federal civil rights law...
...Gay activists say they want equal treatment, not special treatment...
...playing the historian, Newsweek said "it's possible to trace the right wing's anti-gay campaign to a bullwhip" that was "photographed hanging from the late Robert Mapplethorpe's derriere [sic] and featured in his 1989retrospective partially funded by the National Endowment of the Arts...
...A small point, perhaps, but why can't headline writers be more coherent...
...Yet a poll commissioned by the magazine belied that notion: while 78 percent said homosexuals should have "equal rights in job opportunities," 58 percent disapproved of "legally sanctioned gay marriages," and 53 percent said homosexuality is not "an acceptable alternative lifestyle...
...Newsweek spoke of "gay-bashing," a term not only left undefined but also used so indiscriminately as to suggest that anyone disapproving of homosexuality is guilty of it...
...A serious treatment of the subject would have examined the different understandings of moral authority at issue in this debate...
...Might there not be a legitimate constitutional question here about free exercise of religion...
...The magazine reported several examples of violence—youths throwing rocks at an AIDS victim...
...He was later singled out in a New York Times headline for a related bit of incorrectness: "Quayle Contends Homosexuality Is a Matter of Choice, Not Biology...
...The Post ran an unforgettable headline the day after the Republican convention: "Voters Decry GOP 'Gay-Bashing.'" The subhead read: "Rhetoric Seen as Desperate, Ugly—but Maybe Effective...
...The Post's account began: "The Vatican has declared its support for discrimination against gay people in such areas aspublic housing, family health benefits and the hiring of teachers, coaches, and military personnel...
Vol. 25 • November 1992 • No. 11
