Gays, God, and Headlines (Con't)

The other day I blogged about how the media was happy to pretend that all Christians loathe gays, and that any positive news about reconciliation between the two groups seldom received any coverage. Compromise and cooperation is boring--as far as the media is concerned. Bitterness, rancor, outright war--that’s what gets ratings.

A large number of people joined in the debate, many of them simply saying that, indeed, Christians do hate gays, ignoring the blog’s hook, which was that over the weekend the United Church of Christ came out with a resolution supporting gay marriage. That received almost no coverage.

In the meantime, other readers pointed out that the right-wing British newsweekly, The Economist, is running a piece this week called “The Slippery Slope to Bestiality.” (Now there’s headline designed to placate all sides...)

The article is a big wet kiss to Mitt Romney, the Republican Governor of Massachusetts who, when he was concerned with ratings in his home state, was mildly supportive of civil unions. Now all his speeches ignore the civil union issue, and simply rant about the hideousness of gay marriage. That’s because he is running for president, which means that temperance can no longer be a part of his campaign.

What’s particularly rankling about The Economist’s piece isn’t their love for this hypocritical politician who rode to the governorship as a moderate, and now is throwing it away to court the ultra-right wing. It is that the writer chooses to end the piece with a quote from the other side--the gay side. Who does The Economist chose to represent the gay side? An idiotic bartender who muses that “the majority of gays will never get married. We want to have as much sex as we possibly can.”

Having both written and edited for a weekly magazine, I can assure you that these final magazine quotes aren’t random. In fact, they’re usually quotes the writer puts in the mouth of a willing representative, since these pieces are formulated and written before the writer sits down at the computer. The final quote is the money quote. It’s represents the writer’s own editorial opinion.

And so, once again, the media lets it be known that gays only want to have sex. We have no other interests, we have no desire to commit, we just want to go to bed with each other.

If any of you reading this are gay, or gay-friendly, or just nice people, please write The Economist and let them know that there actually are intelligent gay men and women who care about issues other than sex.

Remember the 1973 British movie, “No Sex, Please, We’re British?” I wish the Economist did.