Published: November 5, 2009

I really hate taking pictures. I’m convinced that, embedded in the photons of the light, there are secret, malevolent molecules whose only mission is to exaggerate my worst features and to succeed at hiding my best.  I am at my most generous when it’s time for picture taking and I extend my hand out to ask if everyone else would like me to take the pictures. There was a recent time, however, when that I believed I wouldn’t mind the blinding flashes, the fake smile rolling across my face or even the dizziness that comes after the flash disappears. The only nausea I felt at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago was the realization that many Americans would be painfully unaware of the history due to the lack of press coverage from the local, state and especially national media.

Harvey Milk was able to gather people easily. He stood on rickety soapboxes shouting promising slogans and gave people a sense of hope that, with vim and vigor, a victory was always near. Harvey Milk, as a city councilman, could attract a cameraman to cover his every action, from his promenades in dog droppings in a city park to his active campaign against the hateful and ignorant Proposition 6 in California. How is it that, years later, the queer community, as his descendants in spirit, are not able to rouse together enough cameras when about two hundred thousand of us set up shop on the steps of our nation’s capital? I know we were there; I have photographed and documented evidence. One middle-aged woman, raising a fist in the air, looking up at the rainbow that had formed in the sky some minutes before the march began, screamed, “See! God is with us!” If a transcelestial being can take some time out for equality, then we have to ask ourselves why the national media was so busy that day.

The media has become integral to the functioning of government. It provides an important check on the government by allowing politicians to understand what the people are feeling. With Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) equality not very high on President Barack Obama’s agenda, I find it appalling that the media doesn’t do more to highlight the urgency of the issue to him. The president spoke the day before the National Equality March at a dinner run by the Human Rights Campaign. He promised to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” without offering a timeframe or even a ballpark, but the media, for the most part, glossed over that fact. The issues of Proposition 8, hate crime laws, marriage equality and benefits equality were either ignored or sprinkled into the speech for apt seasoning. With the issue seemingly on neither the media nor Obama’s agenda, visibility for the issue of equality is dangerously low. My question then becomes, why does a basic civil rights issue like LGBT equality not garner the national attention that racial equality garnered 40 years ago?

Obama is a testament to the awesome power of the civil rights movement in America, yet he chooses to turn his back on continuing the trend with LGBT equality. I understand that he has a long agenda that includes foreign and domestic affairs in several different fields, but as a direct benefit of one of the major legs of the American civil rights movement, I find his ambivalence towards LGBT equality antithetical. At the National Equality March, one speaker echoed my exact sentiments when saying that many people feel as if the LGBT movement lacks a central figurehead, like Martin Luther King, Jr. was for the African-American civil rights movement. However, the speaker quickly followed up with, “Martin Luther King, Jr. was the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the civil rights movement.” He was speaking about the same things, and I believe that to ignore this leg of the civil rights movement is to discredit the integrity of the American civil rights movement up to this point.

It is no secret that the media is in trouble. Newspapers nationwide are failing, and many are now offering solely online options for news-hungry Americans. Though the problems are mostly economic, the lack of coverage for the March points toward a larger problem with the media—they may be out of touch with the people. In an age where a boy in a balloon can trump the denial of rights of roughly 10 percent of the United States population, the media should be ashamed. Due to their need to sell papers, gain ratings or cling to biases, they may be losing touch with what the people of America care about. There may be little room in the New York Times for the struggle for equality in the daily dramas of the Madoffs, H1N1 and MTA fare hikes. This could spell further trouble for the media. When I found out that my beloved New York Times failed to cover one of the most important domestic affairs events of the year, I felt a slight resentment towards a publication that claims to publish “All the News that’s Fit to Print.” I’m sorry if the Times finds the search for my rights unfit to print, but if the media continues down this avenue, consumer distrust and dissatisfaction could find their papers unfit for print.