Jan 28th, 2007
What was “negative” about Oprah’s previous portrayals of gay families?
Family Pride Coalition is encouraging everybody to tune in to Oprah on Monday. Here’s an excerpt about it from a post on the organization’s blog:
(NOTE: Family Pride’s blog entry has since been edited and no longer reflects this excerpt. For details, see Family Pride’s statement in the comment section of this post.)
Jan 17, 2007
Jan. 29: Family Pride gay dads on OprahIt’s official! Family Pride dads Mark and Andy Sutherland-Travino, along with their children and great niece, are going to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show on January 29. This is the show’s first positive portrayal of a gay family! We are absolutely thrilled that the Sutherland-Travino family is sharing their family story with millions of Americans - changing hearts and minds across the country.
Here’s the part that made me uneasy: “first positive portrayal.”
With the careless choice of that single word, Family Pride is dismissing all other LGBT-parented families seen on Oprah as negative portrayals. I wonder what the actual families would have to say about that?
Here is a rough list of LGBT-parented families portrayed on Oprah that I can remember:
May 2003: Jenny Boylan was interviewed about transitioning from male to female, and the show included footage of her wife and their children, with reference to how they were handling the change in their family. Boylan summed it up nicely by commenting on how when a person in a family transitions, the whole family is transitioning. Noelle Howey appeared as well, talking about her father who is now a woman. (NOTE: This episode earned Oprah a GLAAD award for “Outstanding Talk Show” in 2004.)
November 2003: Esera Tuaolo, former NFL star, and his husband Mitchell Wherley appeared on Oprah to talk about their blessed life raising twins. Anytime Esera talks about his children, he beams…how was this not a positive portrayal?
November 2003: Melissa Etheridge and her partner Tammy. Etheridge, of course, is well known for being out as a lesbian mother (two older children from her previous relationship and more recently twins with Tammy.) Oprah used the word “marriage” when talking about Melissa and Tammy’s union ceremony.
Fall 2004: A show about gay married men coming out to their wives and children. This episode was inspired by former New Jersey Governor McGreevey coming out as a “gay American.”
Summer 2006: McGreevey in his sit-down with Oprah. His political tactics and choices he made as a closeted husband are nothing to brag about. But discussion about being a father was positive and not sensationalized. He talked about how different his life is since coming out, and how his eldest enjoys spending time with McGreevey and his partner.
Fall 2006: Women coming out of “straight marriages” which included an interview with a son who is a “bothie” — meaning, his mom and dad both came out.
Until I see tomorrow’s segment, I can’t speculate further about why the Sutherland-Travino family warrants the distinction of being the first “positive” portrayal in the bunch.
However, I would be interested to hear from previous guests mentioned above as to whether they thought Oprah presented their family as “negative.” I choose other words when describing real gay families: “honest,” “believable,” and “complex.”
It’s one thing for homo-hesitant and homo-hostile people to divide our families into the ones that deserve recognition (”good gay families”) and the ones who should keep to themselves (”families with issues”) lest they make the “good” gay families look bad. It’s quite another for a national LGBT parenting organization to justify the distinction.
Categorizing these families as “negative portrayals” is shaky ground for a national organization that is (or should) be aiming to be as inclusive of all LGBT families as possible. These labels only alienate the families who bravely open their lives to scrutiny beyond the superficial layer of well-mannered children and saintly parents.
Whatever was family pride thinking!!
Abigail-
Thank you so much for making this point. We have changed the language in our blog to be more accurate.
The initial reason for posting this as the first positive portrayal was due to the fact that one of the producers on the show told the Sutherland-Trevino family that it was the first time an LGBT family was included in a general storyline about families. Rather than be a show dedicated to gay families, this episode is about extraordinary families, and we think that is a huge step in the fight for equality. It was never our intention to make other LBGT families feel as if their appearance on the show had been portrayed negatively.
Thanks again, Abigail. Your post was a good reminder about the importance in carefully choosing language.
Thank you for responding. It’s good to see the fix on Family Pride’s blog.
Family Pride’s reasoning for the initial claim is based on several nuanced technicalities that I don’t totally follow, and I certainly wouldn’t expect that new visitors to Family Pride’s site nor the casual Oprah-watcher would take the time to deconstruct such particulars.
As a communications professional, I find Family Pride’s response totally outrageous.
What Family Pride should have done in their original post is highlight that this was the first time a gay family was included in a general segment of families, signaling a more mainstream acceptance of gay families or whatever they think it means.
Instead, they said: first time an LGBT family on a show generally about families=first positive portrayal of gay families. A total nonsequitur.
On top of which they are now basically blaming either a. the Oprah producer or b. the Sutherland-Travino family for their faux pas by saying that the family was responsible for relaying the information from the producer from which they made a totally erroneous extrapolation.
Again, outrageous from a PR point of view. The right thing to do here was to say “mea culpa” and move on.
it’s so funny to hear about how the “we’re the first….” thing is still going on.
In San Francisco I was guilty of that when we started doing COLAGE groups in 1994, until one of the group facilitators pointed out to me that she had been in a group for colagers in the mid 80’s. And of course here in SF there have been out queers choosing to parent as out queers since the 70’s at least, and organizing conferences. Same in NYC and other places.
We have such a tenuous relationship to our own history, unfortunately.
stefan
What really gets me frizzled is that FPC has been around for 20+ years
and they’ve worked with many of us and they STILL pull shit like this!
There’s a different between creating “punchy” PR and completely
obliterating the history of your own work. Sheesh!
I know back in “the day” (when we communicated with tin cans and a string and walked 18 miles to school), it was sometimes hard to find others that might of started similar events or communities, but hell, a lot of us queerspawn managed to find each other then! Nowadays, I imagine a half-decent google search would help people find that similar things have happened in the past, but I guess that ain’t true. Maybe someone needs to make some Wikipedia entries soon. And the FPC needs to learn to do some research. Of their own stuff, too.
Dan
SG oldster
The harshness of the comments towards Family Pride in this post seems like a classic case of horizontal oppression to me. Yes, perhaps FP did make a slight faux pas in their choice of language, but to continue to harp on them for, ultimately, getting national recognition for an LGBT family (especially after they realized their error and fixed their mistake) does absolutely no good for anybody in the movement. Let’s stop fighting each other, and focus our energy on the real enemies of equality.
Kudos, gratitude, and thanks to the Family Pride staff and other LGBTQ organizations for working so tirelessly to secure equality for my family.
Wait!!! a couple of queerspawn share their opinions and are accused of “horizonal opression”??? WTF? Read their comments again and you”ll see that they are not talking about the family on oprah or this one situation with family pride. their criticism is about a PATTERN, not an isolated incident. and so what are you saying, everyone is supposed to pretned to love everything queer family groups do and say? Kris your post seems to me like a classic case of imposing a condescending analysis on queerspawn who say things “the movement ” doesn’t want to hear!!
Wow…context is everything, I guess.
Let’s look at this from a step back, shall we?
Family Pride is working VERY hard for LGBT families. They made a mistake in a statement, which was corrected.
Now, we can continue to use our energy to rally against those who are fighting the same battles or we can use our energy to work against those would tell us that we’re wrong and that any child born into an LGBT family is going to miss out on a “normal” family experience.
As queerspawn, I am a bit surprised at the vehemence that’s shown toward a group that is working toward a better world for LGBT parents. As children of those very parents, maybe cutting a little slack wouldn’t be too out of line.