"I don't hate your family, so why do you hate mine?" was a question posed by my friend, Matty Jacobson, on a sign he held during the "Let it Stand Rally" at the state's capitol last month. After a photo of him with the sign was posted on Facebook, it received 49 likes and three shares.
A Facebook event named "GOV. HERBERT: LET IT STAND!" was created to invite people to attend the rally. The data on the page showed the following: Going (2,358), Maybe (783), and Invited (25,478). Out of 25,478 people, only 2,358 had made a commitment, at least via Facebook, to attend.
I remember seeing a post someone wrote on Jacobson's Facebook wall. It said something to the extent of, "Gay marriage in Utah: When pigs fly or hell freezes over." His friend, like a lot of the social media world, were overcome with excitement and disbelief that Utah was the eighteenth state to legalize and begin performing gay marriages, a legal right that was taken away less than a month later.
According to
Fox 13, "The U.S. Supreme Court halted same-sex marriages in Utah while an appeals court considers whether the state's amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman is unconstitutional. The full court, in a unanimous order... temporarily blocked same-sex couples from getting licenses. It also put more than a thousand couples in 'legal limbo', Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said." (This story received 925 likes on Facebook and 47 shares on Twitter.)
Jacobson described the feelings he had when the right to marriage equality was made, only to be suspended 17 days later. According to
The Independent, Jacobson explained: "I was elated for the whole time. I don't think anything could have brought me down. But then, when they put it on hold — it's hard to describe. The feeling of being equal and then becoming unequal again — well, it's interesting." And, according to two petitions put together by Jacobson and activist Tim Wagner, there were at least
56,000 people who agreed with him. (This story was viewed online 91 times and had three Facebook likes.)
According to the same
article, "Wagner said he didn’t expect much of a response to the petition, which he posted 15 minutes before going to bed last Friday night. 'When I got up that Saturday morning, there were more than 3,000 signatures. That Saturday night, literally 12 hours later, we had about 30,000,' he said." Now talk about the power of new media! While it might've been possible to obtain 33,000 pencil-and-paper handwritten signatures, the chances of it happening as quickly as it did via the use of the Internet are slim.
Sean P. Means, journalist for
The Salt Lake Tribune, wrote: "For the weekend, at least, it was thrilling to witness — via the news or social media — the outpouring of joy and amazement across Utah, not only from gay and lesbian couples but anyone who wishes them well. As dozens of couples rushed last Friday to the Salt Lake County Clerk’s office, where before 3 p.m. District Attorney Sim Gill had given the green light to issue marriage licenses, those couples couldn’t wait to tell the news via Twitter or Facebook — essentially inviting the world to come to their impromptu weddings."
As
Marshall McLuhan said, "the audience wants to get into the action. They all retire inside to watch the news and then come outside to participate in covering the news and acting it out themselves." McLuhan's statement is ever as true today as it was when he said it in 1970. With the power of new media today, citizen journalism is increasing with rapidity. I don't have TV cable at home, so I found all of my information about Utah's Amendment 3 and the state's allowance of gay marriage via the Internet, first through citizen journalists on Facebook, later through professional journalists on news' websites.
If only for a day, people of all backgrounds joined together to support one cause — marriage equality. As mentioned above, "When pigs fly, or hell freezes over" was the manner in which most content was posted on my social media feed the day U.S. District Judge Robert. J. Shelby stated
"that the law passed by Utah voters in 2004 is in violation of the rights of gay and lesbian couples to receive due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment." Most people posted in excitement at the disbelief, while a select few posted negative comments.
According the same
article, "Equality Utah, a Utah gay rights group with a strong presence in Southern Utah, posted this message on their Facebook page in response to the news: "Love conquers all! Even in Utah..." (This article was viewed online 151 times. No stats were given for the number of "likes" or shares received via social media.)
KSL posted an article titled, "Defending Amendment 3 may cost Utah $2M". It received 2.1k Facebook shares and 32 Tweets. When I typed in "Utah constitutional amendment 3" on YouTube, there were 6,260 results. I searched the following hashtags on Instagram with these results: #Amendment3, 25 posts; #equality, 893,305 posts; #equalityutah, 361 posts; #lgbt, 1,741,621 posts; and #marriageequality, 152,075 votes.
Because I was witnessing different comments on my own Facebook feed, than, say my husband, I know my opinions about the event were shaped differently than his because his feed consisted of different content, as our friends differ in their interests. Similar to the saying, "You are what you eat", I think today you are what you "feed", the word being used in the sense of a Facebook feed, Twitter feed or other social media feed.
It's much like the idea that you are who your friends are. As we've discussed in class, a majority of people delete their friends from Facebook or unfollow others on Twitter, Instagram, etc., whose opinions are not in line with their own. So, we are being "fed" only what we want to "eat". My views on Utah marriage equality are that Judge Shelby's decision was right and the decision of Gov. Herbert to take away marriages that were performed is wrong. Do I feel this way because I have friends who are a part of the LGBT community? Yes. Would I feel this way if I didn't have friends who were a part of the LGBT community? Probably not. Because my life and views would be entirely different, as would my social media network of friends and family.
According to the 2011 textbook,
Understanding Digital Culture, by Vincent Miller, "It is important to reiterate that technologies themselves do not determine society, but instead emerge from a context of socially constructed needs, wants, and priorities, as does the way in which technology is adopted" (p. 96). Technological Determinism is further defined in the textbook: "It is often said, especially in the initial stages of the adoption of a particular technology, that the technology will generate social change based upon the implicit values, virtues, or vices possessed by that technology" (p. 134).
In reference to the right to marriage equality and the use of social media to petition for or against the right, I let the technology drive me because I was using it to repeatedly to understand the situation. I didn't check my emails regularly, or make frequent phone calls to get the information I wanted, I was logging into Facebook on my phone. If I was "hungry" for information, I tuned into my Facebook "feed" to eat. And, like
Sean P. Means said, people were using social media to outpour joy and amazement, to invite others to come to their "impromptu" weddings to share those feelings. As I said earlier, how else would 33,000 signatures be generated in less than 12 hours if it weren't for the Internet? Now that, that is technological determinism.
