Several years ago, when I was working in public radio and television in Central Pennsylvania, I developed a multimedia project called “Race Matters.” The project explored the intersection of race and everything I could think of: parenting, relationships, education, humor, literature and health/heath care, among many other topics.
I never addressed whether race is important; whether racism is wrong; or whether racism is a current reality or a historical fact. That’s because the existence of “Race Matters” itself was an answer to all those questions: Yes, race is important. Yes, racism is wrong. Yes, racism persists.
It is no longer problematic in our country to have discussions in which these answers are understood as facts. There’s no more need to debate them these days than to argue over whether the Earth is flat, or exists at the center of the universe.
On the Other Hand
But envision a project about sexuality, not race, and imagine its basic assumptions to be that sexuality has always existed along a continuum; that there is nothing unnatural or sinful about it; and that expressions of condemnation for homosexuality just perpetuate prejudice.
Such a show would no doubt meet with considerable outrage, and with resistance from people who would see it as an example of pro-gay propaganda in action.
The difference between “Race Matters” and this hypothetical show about sexuality is that society now agrees on equality among races. Society does not yet agree on equality among sexual orientations.
(An aside: I’m not going to address the extent to which sexuality is innate or environmental. I doubt that question will be answered anytime soon, if ever, and it’s immaterial to the issue of whether one sexuality is better, or more normal, than another.)
Given that I see it as no more reasonable to debate the right-ness of one sexuality over another than to debate the better-ness of one race over another, how, as a journalist, do I approach covering “gay issues”?
Balance, Shmalance
Too often, the journalistic paradigm is “balance” — in the most simplistic sense of the word. We talk about telling “both sides” of the story, when we ought to know better. Virtually every important story has far more than two sides to it. A hundred fifty years ago, falling for the false dichotomy of “two sides to every story” would have had us setting slave owners and abolitionists side-by-side in our work, debating the equality of the races.
Imagine such a scenario today: David Duke interviewed and his views incorporated into a story about, say, the continued relative whiteness of American boardrooms. And his thoughts set alongside the views of a black executive. Imagine their statements being balanced equally.
Wouldn’t fly, would it? Because at some point along the line, the concept of racial equality stopped being a point of view in this country and became a generally accepted truth instead.
(Another aside: I know some of you hate that I’m putting race and sexuality on the same moral level, because race is obviously something you’re born with. Let me just say, again, that it doesn’t matter to me to what degree sexuality is innate. I simply refuse to assign a moral preference to one sexuality over another. I know this is controversial. My point is that it shouldn’t and eventually won’t be.)
If we fast-forward 100 or 150 years, I expect we will have reached the same conclusion about equality among sexualities that we already have about equality among races: that it’s not an opinion, it’s a truth.
So, if I’m convinced we’re ultimately headed toward societal acceptance of all sexualities being created equal — and if I believe such a change is both entirely right and long overdue — shouldn’t I be able to approach my work in full acknowledgment of that? After all, I’d rather not contribute, through my own journalistic balancing act, to the delaying of that acceptance.
First, I Tell a Story; Then, You Can Argue with Me
About a decade ago, when I was in graduate school, the Supreme Court struck down a Colorado anti-gay rights amendment as unconstitutional, ruling that the Amendment singled out a group of people to prevent them, and them only, from seeking redress of grievances.
In the process of doing a radio feature on the story, I interviewed by phone the leader of Colorado for Family Values, the organization that had spearheaded the campaign in favor of the amendment. My feelings on sexuality were no different then than they are today, and it severely tested me to keep my voice neutral and to ask non-judgmental questions.
I believe I mostly succeeded, and we had a civil conversation. It was excruciating for me, and I can’t quite buy that it was right. It seems to me that my approach perpetuated the notion that acceptance of homosexuality is as valid as condemnation of homosexuality, when I actually see the first as a truth and the second as a prejudice.
I’ve repeated that experience over and over in the intervening years, and tried to pretend I’m OK with it. Because, of course, balance sounds like a good thing, even when it contravenes who we are, and even when it equates ideas or actions that are not equal.
Now, We Can Argue
I’d like to have the freedom to stop equating things in my work that I don’t see as equal, and to do that within mainstream journalism. I’d like all of us to have that freedom.
And I know there are all kinds of problems with the concept.
I can hear you arguing, for instance, that chaos would ensue if we allowed our individual belief systems to determine our approach to every topic. I can hear you saying that giving our beliefs freer rein would open us up to perhaps continual charges of unprofessionalism. (Indeed, we might have to redefine what constitutes professionalism, if balance is not among its pillars.)
We’d be revealed as individual tellers of stories, as opposed to mere conduits for information. We’d be acknowledging that our beliefs do influence how we approach our work — from the stories we tell to the sources we interview; from the questions we ask to the way we ask them; from the way we structure our pieces to the terminology we use (“partial-birth abortion,” “progressive,” “family values,” “death tax,” “homophobia”).
And we would have to be willing to stand, naked in our beliefs, in front of our audiences, allowing them to accept or reject our work on whatever basis they chose.
Scares the heck out of me; I don’t know about you.
But I can’t endorse the current system. I think it’s disingenuous and just plain wrong.
What abandoning false balance would mean in the daily practice of journalism — what kinds of ripple effects it might have — are questions I don’t pretend to be able to answer.
Maybe you can.
