"Gay Power, Gay Politics" is a 1980 episode of the American documentary television series ''
CBS Reports
''CBS Reports'' is the umbrella title used for documentaries by CBS News which aired starting in 1959 through the 1990s. The series sometimes aired as a wheel series rotating with '' 60 Minutes'' (or other similar CBS News series), as a series of i ...
''. It was anchored by
Harry Reasoner
Harry Truman Reasoner (April 17, 1923 – August 6, 1991) was an American journalist for CBS and ABC News, known for his adroit use of language as a television commentator, and as a founder of the long-running ''60 Minutes'' program.
Over the ...
with reportage by
George Crile. Crile also produced the episode with co-producer
Grace Diekhaus. He conceived the show after becoming aware of the 1979
National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
The first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. on October 14, 1979. The first such march on Washington, it drew between 75,000 and 125,000Ghaziani, Amin. 2008. ''T ...
and took as his focus the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election. After intermittent shooting over several months in 1979 with the cooperation of prominent members of the city's LGBT community, CBS aired "Gay Power, Gay Politics" on April 26, 1980.
Although described by
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...
as a report on the growing influence of the
LGBT
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
community in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
politics, "Gay Power, Gay Politics" focused largely on the supposed sexual practices of the
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
male community, especially
sadomasochism
Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...
. The documentary sparked outrage in the city and CBS was roundly criticized for its journalistic tactics. The
National News Council The National News Council (NNC) was a non-profit media watchdog organization. It investigated complaints of media bias and unfair reporting. The NNC formed in 1973 with a grant from the Twentieth Century Foundation, the Markle Foundation and other s ...
, a media watchdog organization, found that CBS had violated journalistic standards through misrepresentation purposely to reinforce stereotypes and through deceptive editing.
"Gay Power, Gay Politics" was used as a tool of the
religious right to
block or repeal anti-discrimination ordinances. LGBT writers and theorists have continued to criticize the documentary.
Production
George Crile became interested in making "Gay Power, Gay Politics" after learning of the
National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights
The first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. on October 14, 1979. The first such march on Washington, it drew between 75,000 and 125,000Ghaziani, Amin. 2008. ''T ...
scheduled for October 1979. Crile had earlier produced a piece on
assassinated
Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have a ...
San Francisco Supervisor
Harvey Milk
Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in N ...
that ran on the program ''
CBS Magazine''.
[Alwood, p. 182] For this new program, he intended to focus on the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election and the political strength of the gay voting bloc in the city, which the several candidates were courting. He brought Grace Diekhaus in to co-produce with him and secured approval from CBS.
Filming began in the summer of 1979 and continued periodically through November,
[Alwood, p. 184] with the production team shooting in several intervals for a few days each. A number of prominent gay activists, including
Armistead Maupin
Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. ( ) (born May 13, 1944) is an American writer notable for ''Tales of the City'', a series of novels set in San Francisco.
Early life
Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., to Diana Jane (Barton) and Armistead Jones Maup ...
,
Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones (born October 11, 1954) is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2020. In 1983, at the onset ...
and
Sally Gearhart
Sally Miller Gearhart (April 15, 1931 – July 14, 2021) was an American teacher, feminism, feminist, science-fiction writer, and political activist. In 1973, she became the first open lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she ...
, assisted Crile and Diekhaus with the project, although Gearhart and fellow activist
Del Martin
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Ann Lyon (November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists.
Martin and Lyon met in 1950 ...
began questioning their motives, coming to believe the network "was out to do a hatchet job".
[Martin & Lyon, p. 345] Crile interviewed Gearhart for the piece but by the date of her interview she was so mistrustful of the producers that she took measures to try to prevent herself from being misrepresented. "I would lift my voice at a certain point so what I said could not be cut. He seemed to want me to vilify Diane (sic) Feinstein in some way and set her in opposition to the gay community....During one of the breaks I told him that I didn't feel good about it...I felt I had been twisted and manipulated." Ultimately Gearhart's interview was cut entirely,
for which she was "ecstatic".
When Crile began his interview with then-Mayor
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is an American politician who serves as the senior United States senator from California, a seat she has held since 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, she was ...
by asking "How does it feel to be the mayor of
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah () were two legendary biblical cities destroyed by God for their wickedness. Their story parallels the Genesis flood narrative in its theme of God's anger provoked by man's sin (see Genesis 19:1–28). They are mentioned frequ ...
?" Feinstein threw him and his crew out of her office.
Overview
Anchor Harry Reasoner opened the hour with the following narration, over shots of the 1979 March on Washington:
Crile's report, rather than exploring the thesis laid out by Reasoner, instead focused in large measure on sexual activity, including men
cruising in
Buena Vista Park
Buena Vista Park is a park in the Haight-Ashbury and Buena Vista Heights neighborhoods of San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, fina ...
and interviews with so-called
sadomasochism
Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...
consultants. He reported that one out of every ten deaths in San Francisco was attributable to gay men participating in BDSM and that one gay-oriented BDSM establishment's clientele engaged in sexual activity "so dangerous that they have a gynecological table there with a doctor and nurse on hand to sew people up." He compared San Francisco to the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, asking Cleve Jones, "Isn't it a sign of decadence when you have so many gays emerging, breaking apart all the values of a society?"
[Andriote, p. 15] Crile also included footage of Feinstein, in the midst of a run-off election to retain her mayorship, appearing before the
Harvey Milk Democratic Club, an LGBT
Democrat
Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to:
Politics
*A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people.
*A member of a Democratic Party:
**Democratic Party (United States) (D)
**Democratic ...
organization. The program as aired showed Feinstein apologizing for remarks she had made in an earlier ''
Ladies' Home Journal
''Ladies' Home Journal'' was an American magazine last published by the Meredith Corporation. It was first published on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States. In 18 ...
'' interview, followed immediately by applause.
Following footage of Jones at a candlelight vigil for Harvey Milk and additional footage from the March on Washington, Reasoner closed with:
Criticism
Representation of the gay community and journalistic standards
Crile and CBS were sharply criticized for the reporting and editing practices used in the documentary. A gay journalist named Randy Alfred, who had covered many of the same campaign events that were included in the episode, spent some 300 hours researching what he believed to be factual errors and misrepresentations within the broadcast. By July 10 he had prepared a 20-page complaint outlining 44 alleged instances of misrepresentation which he filed with the
National News Council The National News Council (NNC) was a non-profit media watchdog organization. It investigated complaints of media bias and unfair reporting. The NNC formed in 1973 with a grant from the Twentieth Century Foundation, the Markle Foundation and other s ...
, a media watchdog organization. "Gay Power, Gay Politics", Alfred said, relied on "a systematic use of hearsay, oversights, exaggerations, distortions, inflammatory buzzwords, leading questions, and misleading and deceitful editing" that had as its result "patterned distortion". Of particular note was the scene of Feinstein at the Harvey Milk Democratic Club. The editor had inserted applause immediately after Feinstein apologized for her earlier ''Ladies' Home Journal'' comments, which Crile had described as Feinstein's "groveling to atone". The applause had in fact come after her condemnation of anti-gay violence and a promise to appoint a gay or lesbian member of the police commission.
In response to complaints before the episode even aired, CBS had flown the producers to San Francisco, where in an interview with local CBS affiliate
KPIX
KPIX-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's CBS network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside ...
the pair acknowledged that the material for the show was selected for its likelihood to be shocking. Two months after Alfred's complaint to the NNC, CBS defended its people. Network vice-president
Robert Chandler dismissed the bulk of Alfred's complaints as "trivial, irrelevant or clearly represent
ngmatters of opinion or judgment".
[Chandler, quoted in Alwood, p. 188] Chandler went on to acknowledge that the applause was broadcast out of sequence but denied that it was intended to deceive. "Whatever the motivation, it is clear that our producers indicated the applause out of its actual time sequence and therefore misled our viewers. This, then, constitutes an acknowledgment of error and an apology for a breach of our own journalistic standards."
Regarding the program as a whole, Chandler denied any bias.
The NNC met on September 18, 1980 to consider Alfred's allegations. After dismissing many of them as without merit, The NNC found by a vote of 9–2 that CBS had unfairly misrepresented a number of sexual issues, including in the BDSM scenes. "By concentrating on certain flamboyant examples of homosexual behavior the program tended to reinforce stereotypes... The program exaggerated
political concessions to gays and made them appear as threats to public morals and decency."
[Alwood, p. 189] CBS was also found to have offered distorted coverage of the city's annual Beaux Arts Ball and to have manipulated the soundtrack by adding the applause.
The network later apologized for this on the air, the first time that the LGBT community had received an apology from a major news organization.
Many in the city were angered by the broadcast. The
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco.
Government and politics
The City and County of San Francisco is a consolidated city-county, being simultaneously a c ...
was outraged and sent a letter of protest to CBS.
[Rutledge, p. 152] Feinstein wrote to the station manager of KPIX denouncing the episode. She compared the program to "doing a documentary on Italians and only showing the Mafia". She asked for three minutes of national airtime to respond but CBS denied her request.
Armistead Maupin, who had worked closely with the production team, repudiated the program, saying "I had no idea they were doing a hit piece."
Jeff Jarvis
Jeff Jarvis (born July 15, 1954) is an American journalist, associate professor, public speaker and former television critic. He advocates the Open Web and argues that there are many social and personal benefits to living a more public life on t ...
of ''
The San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...
'' wrote, "It's shocking that CBS News, home of Walter Cronkite, would partake of such bigotry."
[Kaiser, p. 271] Writing for the ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'', Terrence O'Flaherty labeled the documentary "a dreadful little program... deadly for everyone it touches".
Nationally, a spokesperson for the
National Gay Task Force
The National LGBTQ Task Force is an American social justice advocacy non-profit organizing the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. Also known as The Task Force, the organization supports ac ...
condemned the documentary for its premise of gays wanting political power for purposes of having sex in public, for ignoring
lesbians
A lesbian is a homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with fem ...
and for failing to address issues of
anti-gay discrimination
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBT topics.
Sexuality
* Human sexuality
** Sexual diversity
** Gendered sexuality
*** Human male sexuality
*** Human female sexuality
*** Transgender sexuality
* Sexual attraction
** And ...
.
Representation of BDSM
"Gay Power, Gay Politics" has also been criticized for its negative portrayal of the
BDSM
BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged ...
sub-culture. CBS used BDSM to discredit the LGBT community by implying that an increase in gay political power would correspond with an increase in BDSM and BDSM-related deaths. The program also miscategorized BDSM as an exclusively gay male activity, despite the fact that most of the BDSM material filmed for the documentary was shot at a location called The Chateau, which had a heterosexual customer base.
[Browning, p. 97] Reporter Crile interviewed San Francisco coroner Dr.
Boyd Stephens, who stated that 10% of homicides in the city were gay-related and that some of those were related to the BDSM community. His words, which Stephens would later acknowledge were based on hearsay,
were widely and inaccurately reported as meaning that 10% of all homicides in San Francisco were related to BDSM.
[Escoffier, p. 275]
Anti-LGBT backlash
Following the airing of the report, the
Community United Against Violence (CUAV), a San Francisco group dedicated to addressing anti-gay violence in the city, reported a 400% increase of reported violent incidents against LGBT people. This marked a reversal of the decrease in violence reports to that point in 1980. Right-wing groups used "Gay Power, Gay Politics" as a fundraising tool until CBS forced them to stop. The
Moral Majority
Moral Majority was an American political organization associated with the Christian right and Republican Party. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. and associates, and dissolved in the late 1980s. It played a key role in ...
, in its successful campaign to repeal a
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
gay rights ordinance, used an image from the program along with the slogan "Don't Let It Spread!" on billboards. In 1985, a Houston group opposed to a proposed LGBT rights ordinance for the city used clips from the program in its commercials and voters overwhelmingly rejected the ordinance.
[Clendinen, et al., p. 449] Controversial psychologist
Paul Cameron
Paul Drummond Cameron (born November 9, 1939) is an American psychologist. Cameron has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay extremist. While employed at various institutions, including the University of Nebraska–Li ...
, on behalf of the right wing
Family Research Institute
The Family Research Institute (FRI), originally known as the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality (ISIS), is an American socially conservative non-profit organization based in Colorado Springs, Colorado which states that it h ...
, has used the 10% homicide figure to support his views on homosexuality, views which have been repudiated by a number of professional psychological and sociological associations.
Continued criticism
"Gay Power, Gay Politics" continued to be a target of criticism by LGBT community leaders and authors, although some have acknowledged that the program included "more than a few kernels of truth".
Former National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director
Urvashi Vaid
Urvashi ( sa, उर्वशी, Urvaśī}) is the most prominent apsara (celestial nymph) in Hindu mythology, considered to be the most beautiful of all the apsaras, and an expert dancer. She is mentioned in both ''Vedic'' and ''Puranic'' scr ...
attacked the program for its presentation of gays as "sexual hedonists, privileged powerbrokers, and arrogant men scheming to force their 'lifestyle' on a recalcitrant public". She further castigated the show for excluding lesbians and people of color (although she acknowledges that this to an extent mirrored the state of gay leadership at the time) and noted her belief that anti-gay attack videos produced in the 1990s were modeled on this broadcast. Gay cultural critic
Frank Browning, while agreeing with the criticism of the tone of the documentary, nonetheless found the dudgeon that many in the community expressed to be "layered with disingenuousness".
[Browning, p. 99] Browning wrote:
While echoing criticism about the exclusion of lesbian concerns and the distortions contained in the broadcast, Browning went on to note that sexual freedom has always been part of the gay male agenda and that it would be absurd to pretend otherwise.
[Browning, p. 100]
Notes
References
* Alwood, Edward (1998). ''Straight News''. Columbia University Press. .
* Andriote, John-Manuel (1999). ''Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America''. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. .
* Browning, Frank (1993). ''The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today''. New York, Vintage Books, a division of Random House. .
* Butters, Ronald R., John M. Clum and Michael Moon (1989). ''Displacing Homophobia: Gay Male Perspectives in Literature and Culture''. Duke University Press.
* Cleninden, Dudley and Adam Nagourney (1999). ''Out For Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America''. New York, Simon & Schuster. .
* Comstock, Gary David (1992). ''Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men''. Columbia University Press. .
* Escoffier, Jeffrey (2003). ''Sexual Revolution''. Thunder's Mouth Press.
* Gross, Larry P. (2001). ''Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America''. Columbia University Press. .
* Haggerty, George E. and Bonnie Zimmerman (2000). ''Encyclopedia of lesbian and gay histories and cultures''. Taylor & Francis. .
* Kaiser, Charles (1997). ''The Gay Metropolis 1940–1996''. New York, Houghton Mifflin. .
* Loughery, John (1998). ''The Other Side of Silence – Men's Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth-Century History''. New York, Henry Holt and Company. .
* Martin, Del and Phyllis Lyon (1991). ''Lesbian/Woman''. Volcano Press. .
* Rutledge, Leigh (1992). ''The Gay Decades''. New York, Penguin. .
* Vaid, Urvashi (1995). ''Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation''. New York, Anchor Books. .
{{Good article
CBS Reports
American LGBT-related television episodes
1980 American television episodes
LGBT politics in the United States
Documentaries about LGBT topics
LGBT-related controversies in television