Covering Charlotte’s Cultural Wars

Covering Charlotte’s Culture War
An Opportunity for Civic Journalism

When a local county commissioner proposed a resolution this spring to eliminate public funding for the local Arts & Science Council, the Culture War broke out in Charlotte — again.

For years, the arts council has successfully acted as local government’s right arm in deciding which organizations qualify for nearly $5 million in public funding for the community’s arts.

However, one Democratic commissioner, a long-time public official, sought to end the public funding, asserting that some organizations within the arts council’s network dealt with homosexual themes. The commissioner considered homosexuality a sin and gays abhorrent. “If I had my way, I’d shove them off the face of the earth,” he said.

With the commission’s four Republicans joining in, the commission voted 5-4 to end county funding of arts after hearing emotional pleas from more than 100 speakers in a six-hour meeting.

On one side, supporters of the resolution said that gays and lesbians sought to recruit children into their lifestyle. They held up signs saying “Sodomy is Not a Family Value” and noted that homosexuality violated the state’s Crimes Against Nature Act. Preachers said they were representing the views of thousands of churchgoers. Others simply argued that morality wasn’t the issue; they just didn’t want tax money spent on the arts.

Supporters of arts funding accused the five commissioners of bigotry, likening them to Nazis. They threatened to sue for discrimination. Civic and business leaders cautioned that the commissioners’ actions would ruin Charlotte’s national reputation. Dozens of people, some fairly prominent, “came out of the closet” on live TV to underscore their feelings.

How can coverage of such events take a civic turn?

That’s the dilemma we’ve been facing at The Charlotte Observer. For us, applying strong, citizen-based journalism was the best avenue we could find to report a complex and controversial story fairly and in a way that reflected what most people in our community were thinking about the issue.

What boiled over in the Mecklenburg County Commission chamber at that April 1 meeting began brewing in the spring of 1996, when Charlotte Repertory Theater staged the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

Religious conservatives were outraged that a publicly funded theater staged a play on homosexual themes that included a nude scene. Arts supporters and gays were equally outraged, loudly calling their opponents “bigots” and “homophobes.”

With shoe-leather reporting and professional polling, we found that while most people didn’t plan to attend the play, they also didn’t have strong objections to it being staged — even with a tax subsidy. We made sure we reported those voices.

We also found through polling that about eight in 10 Charlotte residents supported public funding of the arts and the Arts & Science Council.

The arts issue resurfaced this spring when Mecklenburg Commissioner Hoyle Martin introduced his resolution to end the council’s funding. The resolution included passages accusing gays of luring children to homosexuality.

Before the April 1 meeting, The Observer polled Charlotte residents about Martin’s resolution. Two in three thought the county should continue funding the arts. Eighty-five percent favored the arts council’s method of using artists and volunteers to make funding decisions; just 7 percent said politicians should make those decisions. While a slim majority considered homosexuality morally wrong, just as many said they would not end public funding for gay-themed productions.

But Democrat Martin had struck a deal with the commission’s four Republicans, who opposed spending county money on arts, saying the arts community lacked a “moral compass.”

At that meeting, 700 people overflowed the government center. Each side presented the other as evil, corrupt influences on the community. Civic and business leaders urged commissioners to kill the resolution. The aftermath was anger all around.

The only thing both sides could agree on was that the Culture War had arrived in Charlotte. Again, we felt an obligation to report beyond the rhetoric.

The Observer and TV partner NBC 6 polled Charlotte residents again to test public sentiment on this Culture War. Most people felt it was a battle of extremes and, while they had opinions, they had trouble identifying with either of the vocal sides. Again, we used journalism to help people see all the sides. In addition to reporting the community sentiment:

• Reporter Jim Morrill pulled together a major package on conservatives in the Carolinas, showing that the label applies to a wide variety of people — folks we know and see every day and don’t find them to be demons. His package explored their political and religious beliefs and showed that “conservative” and “hateful” are not necessarily synonymous.
  

• Reporter Tim Roberts pulled together a similar package on homosexuals in the Carolinas, showing that all gays are not the sex-crazed drag-queens their detractors claimed. Readers saw their neighbors, their bankers, their kids’ teachers — most leading lives not so different from members of Charlotte’s “straight” community.

We also helped people get in touch with their commissioners — at home, at work and at the county offices. Commissioners said they never before received so many calls — from people on both sides of the issue and in the middle.

All sides agree, this has been a divisive and anguishing experience for Charlotte. And the debate is ongoing. In addition to reporting the news, our challenge as this story unfolds is to continue looking at the range of public sentiment and not just focus on the loudest voices.