Situation normal

November 20, 2006 By

gay fatherI like to believe my reading comprehension skills are adequate. But my confidence was dampened when I read The New York Times Magazine‘s advocacy journalism piece on gay parenting. The mash note ran 8,000 words, which was at least 2,000 too many.

I had serious trouble keeping track of the characters in the article. My problem wasn’t just that each of the three family groups profiled was a bit complex, what with sperm donors, sexual partners, and extended families. It was that reporter John Bowe thought pronouns would be enough to identify various members of the complicated tree. Sometimes, though, the complexity of the family alone was enough to make me read the same paragraph three times over. Read, for instance, about an interracial lesbian couple, one member of which was impregnated by an opposite-race gay man, who later split up and moved on:

The black woman has a new female partner. The white woman is now living with a man, and the two have had their own child. So, as [gay sperm donor] R. said, between the one child that R. has with the black mother, the twins borne by the white mother with a black donor and the newest, fourth, child born to her with her new male partner, all of whom have some sort of sibling relation to one another, things can be a little confusing. “They’re quite a little petri dish of a family, as you can imagine,” R. told me. The children go from the white mother, who lives in a SoHo loft, to their black mother, who lives in a nice, middle-class row house in Crown Heights. On weekends, they often visit the white mother’s family’s country estate. “I’d say they’re like divorce kids,” he said. “They’ve got a family that split up; they go back and forth.” But the kids love both their mothers, and though the relationships may seem confusing to outsiders, there is certainly no lack of people in their lives who care about them — something many “straight” families can’t claim.

You really have to love that last line. See, the confusion is not only not a problem, it’s actually better than many straight families’ situation.

It’s not that I’m surprised that Bowe — who cowrote the excellent movie Basquiat, penned an introduction to a book of Ted Rall cartoons and published advocacy pieces for The American Prospect — would write such a biased piece, but who does it serve? Wouldn’t New York Times readers be better off with balanced coverage of this hugely divisive issue? Wouldn’t New York Times editors get a much more interesting piece by having a reporter with a different perspective tackle it? Who needs an echo chamber?

Many individuals or movements that advocate for liberalization of family law — be they homosexual-marriage proponents, homosexual parents or polygamists — argue that their lifestyle is normal, even boring. I’m not making a value judgment about whether that is a good or bad thing, it’s just a common refrain used by the groups. Bowe makes that his overarching theme:

  • Gay parents are motivated not “by ideology but by a deep, and frankly conventional, desire to have children,” says a New York University professor.
  • “Considering how many heterosexual parents are overworked, divorced or otherwise unavailable, [gay donor Mark says], children with lesbian and gay parents are “lucky.”

I mean, I appreciate that The New York Times considers children of complex gay parentage to be lucky, but you think there might have been some room for a differing view in the rambling piece.

Finally, Bowe offers this vignette, which reinforces his theme:

P.J., David and Bobbie’s co-parent, is an X-ray technician with a bawdy and infectious sense of humor. Mark’s co-parents, Candi and Jean, one of whom is a former prison guard, were more reserved. Eight conversations were juggled as children came and went, screaming, laughing, crying, demanding juice boxes, spilling juice boxes, getting sand on the frosting on their mouths and so on.

Bowe clearly is a talented writer. But a story devoid of opposing perspectives on a controversial topic does not deserve to be in a major mainstream paper — even if all mainstream papers are turning into publications with all gay news all the time.

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Filed Under: Godbeat, Journalism, Politics
  • Michael

    Even if all mainstream papers are turning into publications with all gay news all the time.

    Funny, you could say the same for the conservative religious blogosphere. The conservative blogs talk more about gay issues than the liberal ones, and religous conservatives spend a lot more time talking about homosexuality than Mainliners and the “religious left.”

    But a story devoid of opposing perspectives on a controversial topic does not deserve to be in a major mainstream paper.

    But what about in a magazine, which is what the NYT magazine is? Are you suggesting that long-form magazine wriiting requires opposing perspectives on a story that wasn’t about the controversy, but was about a picture of the phenomenon?

    Would trotting out Maggie Gallagher or the usual subjects have changed this story, which was designed to give a look into the lives of gay families. And is there a single person in America who doesn’t know this is controverisal and there are opposing sides?

    I know it’s irresistable to pass up the chance to accuse the NYT of bias. But aren’t magazines different from the newspages of a newspaper? Isn’t long form magazine writing different from “just the facts ma’am,” reporting that takes place in the main part of a newspaper? And don’t you think readers are smart enough to know the difference?

    Do we expect Vanity Fair to provide the same kind of objective, balanced reporting that we expect from the news pages of a newspaper?

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  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    Michael:

    We already know that you oppose balanced coverage of controversial moral and cultural issues in publications that you respect. Let’s move on.

  • Dan Crawford

    As I read the article, I was reminded of the Episcopal Church’s Teaching Document on Human Sexuality produced by the House of Bishops and published during the 1994 General Convention. It was really a teaching document on Homosexuality, and contained gems like “homosexual relationships can be a model for married couples because there is no sex role differentiation”. Since the Episcopal Church stopped saying anything useful to heterosexual married couples a generation ago, and since as the new “presiding bishop” of the church has pointed out, Episcopalians are much too intelligent and environmentally sensitive to breed indiscriminately, perhaps the benefits of homosexual parenthood will bring more people to the Episcopal Church – something the NYTimes would definitely regard as another social benefit.

  • Larry Rasczak

    ” But aren’t magazines different from the newspages of a newspaper? Isn’t long form magazine writing different from “just the facts ma’am,” reporting that takes place in the main part of a newspaper? And don’t you think readers are smart enough to know the difference?”

    Actually, since I never went to J-School, I’m sincerely interested in this. Are Journalists taught that different formats have different rules for objectivity?

    I mean I would never expect Bill O’Rilley’s book to be unbiased, or Michael Moore’s. Books are supposed to be the author’s (or at least the ghostwriter’s version of the author’s) views.

    But I didn’t know there are differnt rules about magazines.

    Does this difference in form apply to Newsweek and/or Time? Are “newsmagazines” (whatever they are) under a different standard? I know that buisness magazines like Buisness Week and Forbes and such have to do full disclosure when they cover a big story. But I don’t read any magazines, like Vanity Fair or such. So I honestly don’t know.

  • Michael

    We already know that you oppose balanced coverage of controversial moral and cultural issues in publications that you respect. Let’s move on.

    I don’t oppose balance and have never said that. I don’t support the GR echo chamber on what is bias and what isn’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want balance. I just see it in a different way.

    What’s ironic is that the story isn’t a very flattering portrayal of these blended gay families and one leaves the piece feeling pretty ambivilant about whether any of this is a good idea. By letting the subjects speak–instead of trotting out the usual anti-gay family types–I think most readers leave the article questionig whether these arrangements are a good thing.

    Magazine articles don’t need an AP-style dueling experts approach to be balanced. Instead of being a puff piece, this article is actually is failry damning of the phenominon it is reporting on showing both the good and the bad. That’s the ultimate in balance because it leaves the reader questioning assumptions.

    Quoting Maggie Gallagher or some conservative religious figure wouldn’t have helped that.

  • http://tousdesfreres.org Jean-Michel

    Actually, since I never went to J-School, I’m sincerely interested in this. Are Journalists taught that different formats have different rules for objectivity?

    Actually, I just finished J-School, and journalistes are indeed taught that different formats require not different standards of objectivity, but perhaps different forms of objectivity.

    Instead of writing a classic pro and con piece, for example, you can present somebody else’s subjective viewpoint, keeping your own opinions to yourself, to allow the reader to experience the way somebody different from them lives their life. That seems to be what Mr. Bowes tried to do in the Times. So that format would not require opposing viewpoints. It is assumed the reader is not a blank slate and will not be brainwashed into adopting the piece’s viewpoint.

    Of course, journalists being human, you would expect that Mr. Bowes is probably sympathetic to gay marriage, and this personal bias might shine through in his piece despite any attempt to remain objective. But in theory, Mr. Bowes could also do the same in presenting opponents to gay marriage. In practice, though, in today’s world, I would imagine this would be perceived as being too hurtful to gays, and wouldn’t find its way into the pages of a mainstram paper without a strong opposing viewpoint. So you could argue there is an element of bias involved, with different rules for different viewpoints.

  • tmatt

    I don’t support the GR echo chamber on what is bias and what isn’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want balance. I just see it in a different way.

    ****

    Right. Balance as no balance. Balance as silencing calm and intelligent voices on the other side of the hottest news stories in American journalism.

    Can you even imagine what the mirror image of our approach would look like and how infuriated and offended (WITH GOOD REASON!) you would be?

  • http://www.arlinghaus.typepad.com bearing

    “Considering how many heterosexual parents are overworked, divorced or otherwise unavailable, [gay donor Mark says], children with lesbian and gay parents are “lucky.”

    Oy. Spot the illogic.

  • cheryl

    I think the piece communicated VERY clearly that what we have here is a vast social experiment on children.

  • Jeffrey Weiss

    Speaking of journalism — which is the point of this exercise, yes? (I’ve not yet plowed through the 8,000 words, but I can weigh in on the general principles…)
    Us in the news biz are taught (and not just in school) that there are clearly different standards for different formats. I’ve often wondered if the readers understand.
    But even a casual reader can tell that there are different standards between, say, the sports pages and 1A, yes? And between 1A and the op ed page? And between the metro page and whatever the feature section is called. And between (please please please) news stories and columns?

    Fewer and fewer papers have a Sunday mag these days. But the NYTimes has been consistent with allowing more voice and, yes, even particular perspective to be used in its magazine pieces. Does that confuse the reader?
    I dunno, particularly in these digital times when there’s so much more blurred-line news/commentary available.

  • http://onlinefaith.blogspot.com C. Wingate

    For once, I think the article isn’t that bad. I think some of the statistical apparatus is dubious, but then, I always do. It is a little confusing, but one gathers that this comes with the territory.

  • Michael

    in the news biz are taught (and not just in school) that there are clearly different standards for different formats.

    Be careful, or you’ll be accused of not supporting balance. Allegedly, balance means everything needs to read like an AP wire piece and there’s no room for different approaches.

  • Sarah Webber

    What I’m curious to know, as I’m not a journalist, is what kind of information should be included to produce more balance. Interviews with “traditional families?” Child psychologists? I do agree the article was created to show gay parenting in a positive light. Is this because the media generally gives gay parenting a bad rap or is there just a lack of coverage? I suppose as this is a newish phenomenon, there hasn’t been a whole lot of data to examine until recently. Also, I’m not even sure what kind of an audience the author writing for. I would assume that the majority of readers of the NYT Magazine would already be favorably disposed to gay parenting, but is that a correct assumption? If so, wouldn’t this article generally be considered “preaching to the choir?” Or do you think it was intended as a challenge to those who don’t support gay parenting? Or all of the above?

  • http://www.getreligion.org Mollie

    Sarah,

    Excellent question. I think there are many things a reporter can do to balance out a piece such as this — even while keeping it a positive commentary on gay parenting.

    One way would be to include the perspectives of more than Judith Stacey, the one sociology professor quoted. She’s an advocate for polygamous marriage, among other things; a signatory of a document calling for legal recognition of any possible household or family relationship and any financial benefits such legal recognition incurs, etc.

    That’s fine — it just might not be fine to have hers be the only voice discussing whether or not multiple-partner marriages or family situations are ideal or conventional.

    So I think including some perspective from a more critical eye would be helpful. Keep the Stacey perspective, just add a bit more. It wasn’t as if Bowe was dealing with limited space.

    Another thing, I think, is to balance out the “roses and lollipops” vignettes with some very real addressing of potential problems these children might face. Again, these children might be lucky to have four parents looking after them. But is it all good? Is there any downside to this? Is there any data to indicate that it’s not an ideal situation? I don’t know, but I think it’s worth looking into for a well-researched and lengthy piece.

    I also think that the author could have just trusted in his case studies a bit more. If he shows a downside, such as shown in the first excerpt, he has to make a point that it’s not really a downside. I think such an editorial voice actually did a disservice to his subjects. It made it seem like he was trying too hard to defend them — which is just giving easy ammunition to critics of such an approach.

    Finally, I think the whole approach of “our multiple-partner, marriage-like arrangement is very boring” doesn’t lend itself to balance. Particularly if you’re not quoting someone saying such multiple partner arrangements are not normal.

    Like I said, I think Bowe is a very talented writer and I appreciate the time he took to show these families. It’s just that, in my opinion, the echo chamber approach advances no debate.

  • Dennis Colby

    I honestly couldn’t finish reading the article on Sunday. I don’t think it’s placement was bad (the magazine is the right place for advocacy journalism), I just think it was a little too relentlessly upbeat. There are no unhappy gay families? There are no children of gay parents who – like virtually all children – occasionally get mad at/are embarrassed by/rebel against their parents?

    That relentless spinning made it seem unconvincing and a little desperate. A little discord would have made the piece much more well-rounded.

    I’m curious as to how the writer met up with the families in the story. This isn’t a cold call kind of situation: I guess you can wander around asking strangers if they’re in a four-parent gay domesetic arrangement, but it will be a while before you hit paydirt. Was the writer put in touch with families by advocacy groups? Let’s face it, that happens a lot with these types of stories.

  • http://www.geocities.com/hohjohn John L. Hoh, Jr.

    Just some observations.

    The story could be summed up with the military phrase: S.N.A.F.U. The writer talks about all the dysfunctions in the community where children are involved. But then brushes these dysfunctions with “well, the situation isn’t any different than heterosexual unions,” but then goes on to try to paint it as a better picture. Seems the rondell here is: “Not as quirky; just as quirky; a better quirky.”

    As to objectivity among formats, not only should the difference between the newspaper and magazine be considered but what about, as in this case, a magazine that is an adjunt of the newspaper? Or the magazine that is piggybacked onto the newspaper, a la “USA Weekly” and the reformated “Life” (now a weekly addition that in Milwaukee comes on Friday) or other weekly magazines in your Sunday (for the most part) newspapers.

    At heart the freedom of the press does NOT mean an objective press. I believe freedom of the press was made a pillar of our constitution to protect the media to air multiple viewpoints. My strong suspicion is that the myth of the “objective media” crept in when the media started merging and the concern was one major player could control all voices in a market. Voila! Call it “unbiased,” make it a pillar of the trade, and that takes care of those concerns. Except, as we’ve seen, we have not removed the biases–or tilted to a bias too much in one way. Hence, for an example, the daily newspaper and most TV news in Milwaukee proclaim they are “unbiased.” Meanwhile, talk radio pelts the daily paper as a liberal rag and the weekly alternative Shpeherd Express claims the daily paper carries water for the conservatives. Same paper, but two different accusations.

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  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    JEFFREY:

    So balance and fairness in the NYTs magazine is up to the reporter?

    I have tried to find, for example, the tremendous NYTs mag piece a year or so ago on that exurban megachurch outside Phoenix. It was very critical, yet offered lots of information that let you know the pluses and the minuses of that kind of church.

    In other words, it was exactly what this gay parenting article needed to be.

    Clearly GetReligion understands the difference between columns, news, analysis, etc. Michael knows that too. He’s just being funny, again. I mean, I am a columnist. I know the rules.

    The issue — like so many debates about the TIMES — is when are reporters supposed to do basic journalism and when do they, without warning, slide into advocacy. When are they allowed to be cheerleaders, as the omsbudsman put it a year or so (or longer) ago.

    So, Jeff, you are pro cheerleading? That is a new journalistic format?

  • http://madprof.home.mindspring.com ron chandonia

    We used to love the Times, particularly the magazine. But then I read a story about abortion, a pro-choice screed which recounted the writer’s experience as witness to a partial-birth abortion. It was so horrifying, even to the writer (a new father himself). Then he very quickly explained why it was actually better for the unwanted child to be dead–in PC tones more horrifying than the description of the abortion had been. I have not read the NYTimes since then.

  • Dan

    The piece is also not balanced in that it, like the whole gay marriage movement, focuses solely on the needs and desires of the adults involved without any real consideration of what is best for the children.

    The article may have been intended as a mash note, but it could serve just as well as Exhibit A of what is wrong with legalizing gay adoption and gay marriage. The article confirmed my view that because gay parenting necessarily excludes a biological parent in the parenting process — often in favor of a person or persons of uncertain status — it is more prone to subjecting children to an insecure and unstable home life.

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    Has it ever occurred to the newspaper media potentates that newspaper circulation has dropped nationwide by about one-third–especially in big markets like here in Boston with its oppressive Boston Globe-NY times (owner of Globe) stranglehold on newspaper circulation. And as it was stated above “All Gay news all the time.”
    Most people I know soured on their daily vomit of rad-lib news spin, especially an almost daily dose of homophilia,and cancelled their subscriptions long before they discovered the internet–in fact most still don’t use the internet.

  • http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com Eve Tushnet

    Wow, I mostly agree with Michael here. Not entirely: The piece is marred by the writer’s need to inject justifications (lots of kids have complicated families, these kids have lots of people who love them, etc etc etc) in a way that comes across as clumsy special pleading. BUT the basic piece struck me as novelistic (here are some people and their lives), not as the kind of viewpoint-tennis piece that would require “opposing viewpoints.”

    I am troubled that the piece lacks the children’s voice; but I don’t know if that’s a surmountable obstacle. I would not criticize my parents to the New York Times and I can’t imagine many other children would either, no matter what their private beliefs about the effects of their parents’ choices.

    I’m not sure how I would have attempted to incorporate children’s viewpoints had I been the writer. It’s a terribly tangled situation in which children’s loyalties, needs, self-images, and roles in their own families come into play. This is obviously also true of the adults quoted; but a) kids are much more vulnerable, more unformed and dependent on their parents’ opinions and approval, and more likely to shape their own self-images almost entirely in light of their families; and b) I think the reporter actually did a really good job of showing how adults’ insecurities and self-images may shape/distort their viewpoints.

    Anyway. I think it was a good piece, very much worth writing, and the exact kind of piece that makes the NYT Magazine more readable than the daily NYT. (And I say this as someone who almost certainly disagrees with the author’s perspective on gay marriage etc etc.)

    E

  • http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com Eve Tushnet

    ps: As usual, the better accusation of bias or suppressed perspectives would address the editors rather than the writers. You think someone who opposed gay marriage would get to write a story on complicated gay families for the NYTM? You think there will be “novelistic” (rather than pugilistic) coverage of a critic of gay parenting who was raised by a gay couple? Those are issues; but they’re not issues with this particular article, which I thought was fine.
    ELT

  • http://www.ksvaughan2.byregion.net Karen Vaughan

    I thought the article was a balanced picture of several same sex families. The families ranged from the well-functioning to the dysfunctional. It showed how some families have managed to incorporate people of the other gender into their same-sex family.

    Heterosexual marriage with children in the era of multiple divorces is certainly complicated too. But note that the author was usually quoting the gay parents in bringing up the comparisons, not injecting editorial content.

  • http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com Eve Tushnet

    OK, I’m shutting up after this, but: On further reflection, I (tentatively) think Judith Stacey’s quotes should have either been excised or responded to. Including her takes the article more into the realm of viewpoint-tennis, makes it more like a big-picture think piece and less like a portrait of several complicated families.

    Someone like Elizabeth Marquardt, who’s done a lot of research on children of divorce and the ways in which juggling multiple households and multiple loci of adult authority can be really hard on children, would be an ideal counterbalance, esp. since, as Karen points out, the divorce comparison was brought up by the article’s subjects. “If Stacey, then Marquardt” seems like a decent rule of thumb.