Gay Marriage, Media, and the Tube of  You



Mason Hill


    Since Johannes Gutenberg invented the modern version of the printing press in the Thirteenth Century, people have been highly influenced by written language and printed word. Since then, media has evolved into the modern context and includes print, radio, television, and the internet. Media has taken over on how society views issues because of how images are portrayed and how information is presented. I argue that because of this power to influence the public, it is essential that the LGBTQ community have positive figures represented in the media and that Youtube.com should be considered a part of that media. In using the works of Jasbir Puar and Gayle Rubin, I will discuss media representation of the LGBTQ community and Youtube.com videos that focus on gay marriage and the family life of same-sex couples. 

Youtube.com is an internet sensation that has gone viral - daily reaching tens of millions worldwide and should be considered media because media is defined as any “means of mass communication” (Oxford Dictionaries). With this in mind, it is important to note that Youtube.com is unique in that it is controlled by the individual participants - what videos the supplier posts and what the consumer chooses to watch. This individualistic aspect of Youtube.com helps control the representation of LGBTQ community members, and is being used to positively receive support for gay marriage.

A Youtube.com video entitled “Zach Wahls Speaks About Family” has reached over sixteen million people. Wahls’ speech to the Iowa House of Representatives about his gay-raised family has been an amazing contribution to positive media representation on gay marriage. He states that much debate on the issue is about the family aspect and the question of “can gays even raise kids” (Youtube.com 2011) He thwarts these and other oppositions with personal life stories where his eloquence, intellect, boldness, family pride, and personal life success come across in the short three minutes of the video. Wahls even goes as far to announce that “If I was your son, Mr. Chairman,  I believe I’d make you very proud” and concludes with “The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character” (Youtube.com 2011) This video of a young man speaking from the inside workings of a gay family has helped millions see how a gay couple can succeed in raising a family and helps bolster the fight for marriage equality here in America.

However, Youtube.com is only a fraction of the media as a whole. Jasbir Puar and Gayle Rubin discuss the detrimental effect that media has had on the LGBTQ community. Puar discusses the aftermath of September 11 and how the media played a crucial role in turning Americans against Middle Eastern individuals through the use of LGBTQ images. The image of Osama Bin Laden getting anally penetrated by the statue of liberty has led to homosexual hostility that totally undermined the LGBTQ efforts leading up to September 11. The media’s repetitive use of these images has lead to the “quarantining of the terrorist-monster-fag” and has encouraged “aggressive heterosexual patriotism” (Puar 2002). Had these images not been used, today’s view of homosexuality would be different, but we can only speculate as to how different those views would have been.

Gayle Rubin discusses the media’s role in creating the socially accepted idea of “sexual behaviors” and explains how the “mass media nourish…attitudes with relentless propaganda” (1993). This overkill of “relentless” media coverage is exemplified in another Youtube.com video where eighteen news stations declare Conan O’Brian officiating a publicly televised gay marriage as “pushing the envelope” (Youtube.com 2011). Through this repetitive representation of a gay marriage, the overall message and significance of the event was underappreciated and neglected. The media did not focus on the actual love between costume designer Scott Cronick and David Gorshein, but how the heterosexual world would view this marriage on American late night television.

Thus, the representation of the LGBTQ community in the media affects queer social acceptance into heterosexual society. Jasbit Puar and Gayle Rubin both express the significance and negligence of negative media portrayal, whereas Zach Wahl is one of the first positive representations of the LGBTQ community seen on Youtube.com. All in all, it is vital for the LGBTQ movement to receive positive representation in the media, and Youtube.com is the first media outlet that is being used to do so. 


Works Cited

“Zach Wahls Speaks About Family.” Youtube. 2011. Web. 22 Feb. 2012.     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMLZO-sObzQ

“Media Reacts to Conan’s Same-Sex Wedding News.” Youtube. 2011. Web. 22 Feb.     2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GME5nq_oSR4 

“CONAN: The Wedding of Scott Cronick and David Gorshein.” Youtube. 2011. Web. 22     Feb. 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S3lujuNV-0

“Media.” Oxford Dictionaries. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2012.     http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/media

Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”     from Social Perspectives in Gay and Lesbian Studies ed. Peter M. Nardi and Beth     Schneider

Puar, Jasbir. “Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War of Terrorism and the Production of     Docile Patriots” in Social Text 72 Vol. 20 No. 3, Fall 2002.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMLZO-sObzQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S3lujuNV-0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GME5nq_oSR4