LAST AUGUST, People magazine devoted its cover to the California marriage of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi. For the publication that stands as a bellwether of American popular culture, it was business as usual—another celebrity wedding. And yet it was also extraordinary: two women dancing together, gazing into each other’s eyes. As Americans both “red” and “blue” left the grocery store with the magazine tucked in along with the Cheerios, the message that gay and lesbian couples love one another and desire to form long-term commitments was unmistakable.
The founders of GLAAD, The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, understood the power of the media in 1985 when they first met in a New York City apartment to consider how GLBT people were being portrayed in the mass media. At a time when the scourge of AIDS was decimating parts of the community, these activists understood that the battle had to be fought on multiple fronts. They understood that homophobia was being fueled by the media’s ability to drive public opinion. There they began to develop a new strategy for the gay and lesbian civil rights movement that would have—and continues to have—an enormous impact on the perception of GLBT people in our society.
The organization’s mission has changed little in its 22-year history. GLAAD is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate, and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The organization still focuses its attention on the power of the media to shape attitudes and opinions toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. Research tells us that the number one influence on attitudes toward this community is a personal connection with someone openly gay. The second most important influence is the mass media.
What has changed during GLAAD’s history is not its strategy but its tactics. The group has not abandoned the tactics of the late 1980’s and early 90’s but instead has added tools to its activist arsenal. Two reasons stand out. First, in GLAAD’s early days, the gay and lesbian community had precious little visibility or influence. To garner attention demanded a focused set of tactics designed to create noise. Doors were not open to the community. There were no meetings with The New York Post, only activists gathered outside the building tossing “rags” as a metaphor for second-class newspapers, while the journalists and photographers of the day took note. Second, as the community’s visibility increased, GLAAD gained a more sophisticated understanding of the additional tactics that were available to achieve its goals. With greater access to the media came a shift toward tactics or the “how” of activism, and a growing awareness that tactics had to be tailored to each issue. This approach required that activists assess all the leverage points, identify all those with a stake in the proposed change, and work to engage a broader assembly of stakeholders to help drive the point home. Also required was a willingness to examine the position of the opposing side or sides and to understand their motivations. It is not possible to change attitudes or opinions without targeting their origins, which requires that activists endeavor to approach their opponents not strictly as outsiders but from “inside” their framework of vested interests. When I took the helm as GLAAD’s executive director in June 1997, I arrived as a media insider and brought a heightened understanding of the industry and its motivations. In my new role as an activist, I was suddenly an outsider, but found that my experience as a media person was a huge asset as we tried to change the way specific media outlets treated us and our cause. Let me focus on a few projects in which I think this experience paid off. One goal that we focused on was getting The New York Times to include same-sex couples in its wedding pages, which appear each week in the “Sunday Styles” section. It was a goal for which we felt strongly that right was on our side. We knew there were smaller papers in the U.S. that were well ahead of the Times on this issue. Still, we needed to understand what was motivating a paper often pointed to as a liberal bastion to resist this change. We found our opportunity at a fundraiser for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. I introduced myself to a senior staff member from the newspaper of record. Our conversation was casual and easily moved to this topic. When I asked him why this change had not yet been made at the Times, he replied: “I realize that I’m standing on an ever-shrinking island of tradition.” This answer provided what we needed to move ahead, a clue to the paper’s motives in resisting change: the obstacle was tradition. I replied: “I now understand that our job is to either shrink that island or nudge you off.” Our first task was to understand every conceivable objection. We identified allies on the inside who helped us out. We did our homework and developed a list of all the newspapers in the country that had run a notice for a same-sex commitment ceremony. Recognizing the “tradition” argument and the commitment the publishers had to the world of print journalism, we gathered a representative sampling, in hard copy, of such announcements. We secured a meeting and went in with a powerful presentation. We were professional, spoke their language, and anticipated all their arguments. Less than a month later, the first same-sex couple appeared in the “Styles” section. Perhaps GLAAD’s most celebrated campaign was its work to raise awareness about Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a radio talk-show host who offers psychological advice to callers. In the late 90’s, talk radio was on GLAAD’s radar screen, and there were robust discussions about the best strategy to take on conservative “shock jocks.” At about this time, our volunteer media monitoring teams were picking up highly homophobic statements by the immensely popular Schlessinger. After listening to her replies to gay-related queries, I concluded that she was motivated by her status as a woman and as a mother. The staff agreed that I was the best messenger to reach out to her. We drafted a letter asking for a meeting and, less than a week later, I received a call directly from Dr. Laura, who called our missive “the most articulate letter she’d ever received from an activist”; and she invited me to Los Angeles for a meeting. The meeting accomplished little on the surface. Schlessinger was immovable on her right to express her deeply held religious beliefs, including her habit of characterizing gay and lesbian people as a “biological error.” However, as we worked our way through what became a full-fledged campaign, the meeting proved to be of enormous value. We knew that as we took on Schlessinger in a highly visible way, people would ask why we didn’t just confront Dr. Laura face-to-face. People would ask the question time and time again: have you spoken with her directly? The fact that we had done so was critical to our ability to move the conversation forward. An opportunity arrived with the announcement that Paramount Television had offered a TV deal to Dr. Schlessinger. The “free speech” argument is a powerful one in the radio business and presented GLAAD with challenges. Television has different standards pertaining to issues of defamation. Our next tactic was to press for a meeting with key executives at Paramount Television. It was here that GLAAD learned a valuable lesson about “inside” tactics. We agreed that the meeting would be off the record. By this time in our work, the gay and lesbian community was in an uproar about Schlessinger and was aware of the Paramount meeting. In agreeing to meet off the record, we lost sight of the fact that we were representing the GLBT community, which we had an obligation to inform about the outcome of the meeting. As a result, GLAAD found itself the target of community activists angered by the secretive nature of our meeting. Fortunately for us, Schlessinger’s staffers violated the agreement to keep these discussions private, freeing GLAAD to speak openly about them, as well. In this meeting, we did not ask Paramount to cancel the show but instead asked for assurances that if Schlessinger went on national television and defamed the gay and lesbian community, she would be held accountable. Paramount executives were unable to give us that assurance. One thing we learned at this meeting was that profit wasn’t the only motivating force: the wife of the head of Paramount’s TV Division was a huge fan of Dr. Laura. We also learned that everyone was sticking to the line that Dr. Laura was entitled to her deeply held religious beliefs. Then we started to think about the story. How could it be told more broadly so that everyone would care about it, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity? We considered different decision makers beginning with station managers. What were their interests and motivations? We started to consider allies. Gay employees at Paramount, GLBT employee groups at advertisers, other progressive groups. We did not, for example, assume that decision makers and interested parties had actually listened to Dr. Laura, so we made sure they had every opportunity to do so. We mailed out cassette tapes (this was eight years ago) of “Dr. Laura’s greatest hits” to the station managers in the top markets. We also sent the cassette to 150 influential journalists. We then moved to target potential advertisers. Our timing couldn’t have been better. Paramount was just embarking on efforts to secure national sponsors, so there was an opportunity for us to educate these advertisers before they made commitments. We also understood that Paramount planned to target women and mothers in their advertising strategy. And so we developed a full-page ad targeting potential advertisers that included direct quotes from Dr. Laura on a range of topics, each more heinous than the last. We understood that an advertiser like Procter and Gamble might care a great deal about offending women and working moms, so we were sure to include Schlessinger’s choice remarks on these topics as well. We then sought out allies and secured co-sponsorship by gay, women’s and faith-based organizations. And we took to the streets. We had learned a valuable lesson after the Paramount meeting and the furor it created, and now understood the level of commitment in the GLBT community to do something about Dr. Laura. Our “street” was the sidewalk outside the fabled gates of Paramount Studios. Thousands of LGBT people joined as we made our case complete with signs and bullhorns. We also understood what GLAAD’s founders saw clearly—that a protest is simply a press conference in a different location. The campaign against Schlessinger’s show lasted through much of 2000 and into 2001, when it was finally canceled. The tipping point in this decision was the work of people, not in New York or L.A., but in Cincinnati, Ohio, when the LGBT Employees Group got organized at Procter and Gamble. This group lobbied the company’s senior executives, persuading them to release a statement indicating that they would not buy ad time on Dr. Laura’s new show. Once the biggest kid in the sandbox got out, it was all over. The show limped along for a while longer and was soon canceled, in March 2001, after just a few months on the air. But it may well be that, owing to our earlier efforts, the show was “DOA” the moment it hit the air. These efforts also yielded a prestigious honor from PR Week, the premiere publication of the public relations industry, which awarded GLAAD its “Best Nonprofit Team of the Year” for our work. They pointed to the extraordinary impact we had, the array of tactics, and the cost effectiveness of our campaign (which cost less than $125,000). Another measure of our impact came courtesy of actor–comedian Billy Crystal. During his opening monologue at the 2001 Academy Awards, Crystal included a comic reference to Schlessinger’s homophobia. It was at that moment that I grasped the impact that a small organization with a minimal budget could have if it used its resources in a way that matched tactics with the specific opportunities and constraints presented by different situations. I would argue that our real power comes from understanding that our arsenal of tactics has grown in these last two decades thanks to the work of activists who have come before us. We owe it to them to approach each situation with the highest level of sophistication and nuance. We must understand the greater power this arsenal offers us and know that our success will be measured by the extent to which we understand and utilize these assets to their fullest advantage. Joan Garry, former Executive Director of GLAAD, is a featured blogger at The Huffington Post and writes a syndicated column for the LGBT press.
