The last year has seen increasing coverage of the gay marriage issue, fueled by Canada’s legalization of gay marriage, the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in support of gay marriage last November, and the recent Ohio State Senate ban against gay marriage (which is the broadest to be passed so far in the United States, going so far as to bar state employees from receiving benefits for their domestic partners). This historic step backward came one day after President Bush’s State of the Union address, in which he declared that “Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.” In other words, keep gays and lesbians out of it.

Given the media's propensity to ignore lesbians in favor of focusing on gay men, how are lesbians faring in all this media coverage? A survey of articles focusing on “gay marriage” in the top 20 US newspapers published between January 21 and January 29 of this year shows that coverage has actually been fair and balanced when it comes to including lesbians: of the 23 articles published during this week that centered on gay marriage (excluding articles focusing on other issues, such as the State of the Union, which mention the topic), fifteen openly lesbian women and thirteen openly gay men were quoted.

In addition, many newspaper editorials have taken the anti-gay marriage camp to task for supporting what is essentially discrimination, often making parallels to the civil rights movement (interracial marriage was banned until 1967 when the US Supreme Court ruled that the “freedom to marry” belonged to all Americans, regardless of race). Writing in USA Today last week, Gail Mathabane argues that “Gay marriage, like interracial marriage, is not a threat to the sanctity of marriage and will not upend America's social structure.”

It is refreshing to see that lesbians are getting equal representation in coverage of this issue, and heartening that people not affiliated with the gay rights movement are speaking out in support of basic rights for gay and lesbian couples.

But most reporting never goes beyond listing poll results, quoting a few talking heads from each side of the debate, and once in a while throwing in a quote from a lesbian or gay man who wants to be married. For those of us who consider the mainstream press to have no responsibilities beyond relating “just the facts,” this may be fine. But if you recognize that the mainstream press plays a huge role in influencing Americans’ opinions on hot-button topics, and you support the idea that gays and lesbians deserve rights equal to those of straight Americans, then this kind of press coverage is concerning.

It's not like journalists haven't had plenty of time to do their research: gay marriage has been a popular topic in the press since the early 1990s, when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was akin to sex discrimination. This was followed by a rush to pass anti-gay marriage laws in states across the country, and culminated in the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which defined marriage as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” In 1998, Alaska flirted briefly with the possibility of legalizing gay marriage, but an amendment to the state constitution prevented this development. Meanwhile, the state of Hawaii also passed a law amending its constitution in order to prevent gay marriage.

But in 2000, Vermont legalized same-sex civil unions (the first state to do so), and last November the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that barring gay and lesbian couples from marrying legally was unconstitutional, causing the backlash we're currently experiencing. Newspaper reports are filled with poll results showing that the majority of Americans are against gay marriage, there is talk of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and pundits are popping up all over the cable news.

If this feels familiar, that’s because it is. The same thing happened in 1996 when Hawaii was the big gay marriage battleground, and guess what? That was an election year, too.

What’s going to prevent the gay marriage debate from degenerating into a stalemate in which both sides do little more than call each other names? Not polls and pundits, but more articles interviewing and exploring the experiences of actual lesbians and gay men who have been denied the right to get married—and for more than a one-sentence quote. I’m not talking about the directors of GLAAD or Lambda Legal or any of the other excellent gay rights organizations that are spearheading the legal battle for equal rights for gays and lesbians, but regular, everyday people who deal with gay marriage as an individual choice.

The New York Times has published detailed, thorough, and heart-wrenching reports on controversial topics like race and mental illness. This kind of journalism literally brings these difficult issues home, and allows Americans to engage with people they may not personally know. When the stories of lesbian or gay couples who want to be legally married are excluded from news reports on gay marriage, readers are more easily able to distance themselves from the issue.

In general, people are less accepting of things that they find unfamiliar, and in fact, all poll results show that resistance to gay marriage is much lower among respondents who have gay friends.

Perhaps these reporters—who tend to keep lesbian and gay couples’ perspectives at arms’ length—do not mean to create this distance between the reader and the topic at hand. It is, after all, a truly hot-button topic that involves sex, religion, changing cultural values, and discrimination. It’s certainly not something you want to wade into blindly.

But now that there is a solid foundation of fair and balanced reporting on gay marriage, it is time to start delving deeper. We’ve all had our fill of Gay Marriage 101 in 2003; let’s move on to the heart of the matter: deeply-entrenched discrimination against individuals who want to have their families supported by the law. It’s a harder story to write, but ultimately a more valuable one.