Friday Assignment 2: Hot topics: Gay Marriage

Hello everyone,

This next blog on gay marriage is about the framework, as in how the movement frames itself to those who support gay marriage and who has framed them (through intersectionality and other factors). Comparing and contrasting the framing of the gay marriage movement with that of the pro life and the environmental movements. And, finally, the last section will focus on the consequences of framing the issue and how the gay movement can be “re-framed” so it can be more inclusive.

In this first section, I will be focusing on the framework of gay marriage and who framed it. Now the idea of framing a social movement, protest, or conflict, is to make it inclusive to a specific group of people (in my blog’s case: the gay community and their supporters). The issue must be framed and resonate with the beliefs, feelings, and desires of potential recruits of the specific cause. These frames can take the FORM of anything including appealing stories, powerful clusters of symbols, slogans/ catchy words, attributions of blame for social problems, etc. A form in the gay community is the rainbow flag symbolizing their pride as being Gay Bisexual, Lesbian, Transgender, or Queer. Another form of framework of the gay rights movement is your sexuality as being political, and civil as well as social as the three components of equality. What does that mean? The political aspect of the gay rights movement is asking politicians and legislators enforce equal rights and disallow discrimination as well as having the same benefits as heterosexuals. They want to be a legally recognized group to be allowed to married and be afforded the same rights as straight people. It is a civil and social issue because of the discrimination involved with this issue. As people looked at African Americans, women, etc. before their movements is how the gay community is looked at currently. They are looked as second class citizens, not worthy of equal status as straight couples. Next, is how intersectionality is involved with this movement.

Those who usually frame this protest are gay community and supporters are the ones actively leading this protest. It is difficult to pin down any real salient characteristics such as race, sex/gender, socioeconomic class, religion, or political affiliation. It is difficult because they gay community are comprised of different races, sexes, class, religion or political affiliations. If your gay, you’re gay it does not matter which of these categories you fall in. People who are not only gay, but their supporters are spread in all these intersectionalities as well. The challenges and difficulties that are posed by intersectionalities of gay rights is that there are people from all of these groups and all are asking for equal rights for the gay community.

Now I am going to compare and contrast the pro life and environmental movements with the gay rights movement. Comparing and contrasting different movements are vital in the study of different movements because it allows to see the strengths and weaknesses are involved with each movement and what can be improved. In comparison to the pro life and environment movements, they all have their target audiences like the religious people and women in the pro life issue and for those who are conscious about making the Earth better in environmentalism. They all try to provide awareness and educate the public by the means that suits their need. Typically, these means go from education to protesting in public. On the other hand, these protests are obviously different because they are different protests and trying to reach different goals. One difference is faces. In the environment movement, the prime face is Al Gore who is the one who is working day and night to try to try to improve the environment. Similarly, in the pro life movement, the “real” face there is the unborn child because they are claiming that they are alive and deserve equal rights and should not be murdered. But in the gay movement, the “real” face is really the community. Recently, the runner up in American Idol came out as gay and he claimed they he did not want to be the poster boy for the gay community. For personal reasons, there may not be a poster person for gay rights and it’s just defaulted to the community at large. When these movements, particularly the gay rights movement, the way they try to get support is to going out to the public and gain support from the public. Some strategies include donations, signing people up as members to the cause, talking to politicians and legislators, campaigning for equality and advertising that to the public.

At least one consequence of the gay rights movement being framed this way is that there are people who hate gay people (not that every person in opposition hates gay people). These are the people who passionately are fighting against the gay rights movement are the kind that are shaken up to their core. These people include, but are not limited to fundamental/evangelical religious people and homophobia people. These groups and others they gather to support their cause tries to suppress the gay rights movement. An example of that is proposition 8 in California in 2008 elections. I do not think that anyone is excluded from this movement because it does affect everyone.

One last thing is there any in which the gay marriage can be re-framed to be more inclusive. It could be more inclusive if there most prominent group that is by gay people for gay people. This group will work closely with other organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to not only fight for equal rights, but this group would help the gay community financially (reasonably of course), help gay folks come out to their family, and just over all help the gay community and their families. Adding this kind of framework would be useful if there was one centralized organization.

Sincerely,

Steven Weingarten