Connections

As I researched my selected "instance" in public discourse, the gay marriage debate, I couldn't help but wonder how I could make more of a connection to our reading material in class. First, I thought I could take a look at the language surrounding the debate to see if I could find frames or appeals to "common sense."

Just before I started researching that, I thought of class discussions that involved people saying things such as "I can't believe gay marriage was such a big issue in the 2004 campaign. " That, in turn, made me think of Angus who talked about politicians deciding what the big issues were. How many times have you heard someone say they should have focused more on the war, or the economy.

So before finding arguments on the gay marriage debate, I went to the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) website. It turns out, that in all three presidential debates, consisting of about 55 questions total, there was only one question about gay marriage. The Iraq War and Homeland Security were the subject of about 22 questions.

So, in addition to the language in that particular debate on gay marriage, I thought I might look into why people thought it was such an important issue. Obviously, the politicians were focusing more on the war and security in their debates. Maybe people actually do care about morality (how awful) in their everyday lives and just thought they should care more about the war.