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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
To change people's minds on issues like gay marriage, liberals need to learn to tug at their heartstrings.
Jan 24, 2005 | In his book "Collapse," Jared Diamond writes that "perhaps the crux of success or failure as a society is to know which core values to hold on to, and which ones to discard and replace with new values, when times change." He wrote this statement in discussing national security and environmental devastation, but it's also applicable to individuals. In the recent presidential election, progressives hoped to persuade Americans to change their minds about certain core beliefs -- including accepting the legitimacy of gay marriage -- but failed.
What makes someone reverse a long-held opinion about a touchy political issue? What's the thing that convinces an otherwise apolitical Midwestern churchgoer that gay rights are a good idea or that racial inequality needs to be immediately addressed?
Last spring, Salon published my article about concerns among the gay community that the marriage issue would be red meat for the right during the election. Clearly it was. And a good part of the problem -- the reason many Americans weren't convinced -- is that there was no strong sense among voters of an injustice perpetrated. Once the San Francisco courthouse became the center of the issue, the public face of the gay marriage debate was predominantly one of celebration, not of a right wronged.
On right-wing media outlets like Fox News, personal tales of victimization -- by "liberal elites," professional academics and Hollywood libertines -- abound. Witness the many network news segments that have profiled Christian teens "shut out" of their high schools, unable to conduct public prayer meetings. Consider also the inevitable framing of stories about the pagans who tried to cut Christmas out of the holidays. The right spins these stories, making big agenda issues absolutely personal, and garnering empathy for presumed victims. It does this even though -- as Jon Stewart pointed out on his talk show recently -- the right already controls all wings of government and is powerful in the most classic sense. The right uses these stories because they are effective.
One public figure understands the power of a sympathetic story. And while many lefties reading this are likely to roll their eyes at the mention of Oprah Winfrey, there's no question that she gets results -- she changes minds, skillfully encouraging her viewers to root for the underdog. In one recent example, a charismatic, eminently likable gay man had just experienced unfathomable loss. In relating his ongoing story, Winfrey made gay relationships understandable to the kinds of Middle Americans who voted against gay marriage initiatives.
The show was about Nate Berkus. (For blue-staters unfamiliar with Berkus, he's a telegenic designer with all-American good looks who appears regularly on Winfrey's home design segments. Her viewers love him -- and his window treatments.) Berkus had been vacationing in Sri Lanka when the tsunami struck, and his partner, Fernando Bengoechea, has been missing since the event and is presumed dead.
Winfrey introduced Berkus, speaking directly to the camera. "For the millions of you at home who've come to know Nate as the sweet, talented cutie-pie with the great big heart," she said, "you should know that he and I have read your letters ... You will never know the depth of comfort those prayers and letters have brought to him and his partner Fernando, who is still missing. [They] are literally lifting Nate up."
As the show went on, Winfrey talked with Berkus about the couple's last minutes together and about how Berkus had managed to survive. She brought others onstage who had met him in the disaster's immediate aftermath, and interviewed his mother and his partner's brother and sister-in-law. Winfrey then urged viewers to give to her Angel Network on behalf of tsunami relief organizations.
