When a ‘non-issue’ becomes an issue in discourse surrounding LGBT communities

This paper uses the theory of intertextuality to examine the discourse surrounding California’s Proposition 8, the statewide ballot measure to reverse legalization of same-sex marriage. More specifically, this paper analyzes the newspaper reports that surfaced in February 2010, concerned with the fact that the judge deciding the case is a gay man. The initial story, which claimed that this should be a “non-issue,” sparked a multitude of articles aimed at different readerships over the following week, therein making the “non-issue” an issue. I analyze how intertextuality is used by three types of news sources (LGBT, mainstream, and Religious Right) to report the same issue but in ways specifically aimed at the ideal reader of each. I argue that the way intertextuality occurs in constructed dialogue, lexical choice, and semantic presupposition creates an ideological message meant for and decodable by each publication’s ideal reader, therein reinforcing group ideologies about LGBT issues.