The reach of Lady Gaga goes beyond simply being an artist who entertains and sells millions of records and has millions of followers. Her music has a social activist component and on July 10, 2011 it found yet another way of getting an important issue into mainstream America's consciousness.
Thanks to the two daughters of a high-profile American politician who played Lady Gaga music for their Dad, the issue of gay rights got some play in the press. The politician, Tim Pawlenty, a highly-conservative candidate for the Republican Party's nomination for the 2012 U.S. Presidency, recently said he liked Lady Gaga. His was subsequently asked about his comments in an interview on the NBC show 'Meet the Press.'
Pawlenty's platform does not advocate for gay rights - quite the opposite - and yet he'd offered up on the online site, Glittarazzi that while he found Lady Gaga "weird" he liked her music, including Born This Way (he said it "...had some appeal"). The song, a paeon to gay rights, has lyrics like "no matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgendered life / I’m on the right track baby, I was born to survive."
Tim Pawlenty: Likes Lady Gaga But Not Her Lyrics?
HIs remarks gained media attention and in the wake of them 'Meet the Press' host David Gregory asked Pawlenty, during Pawlenty's July 10th appearance on the show, about gay rights and gay marriage. The issue is now being debated in Iowa - where gay marriage is legal but where Republicans seek to ban it - and elsewhere in America; Pawlenty had recently begun campaigning in Iowa.
Gregory asked the former governor of Minnesota about gay rights and if he thought that "being gay is a choice." While Pawlenthy's answer suggests he hasn't really listened to the lyrics of Born This Way, and made it clear he has yet to open his mind to gay rights, his response has brought the issue back into the living-rooms of Americans and opened up debate.
"Well, I have two teenage daughters who listen to Lady Gaga, so I'm subjected to it. And it has some good qualities to it," the former Minnesota Governor said. "But as to, as to gay marriage, I'm in support of traditional marriage as between a man and a woman. I have not supported the issues of allowing gay couples to have the same benefits and public employment as traditional couples. And so this is an issue in Iowa and across the whole country. But I've stood in favor or traditional marriage and traditional relationships in that regard."
Born This Way: Gaga Ode to Gay Rights
Gregory also got Pawlenty to talk about why gays are gay. The 'Meet the Press' host noted Born This Way suggests gay people are born gay, it's simply who a gay person is, and he noted many support that belief. Pawlenty wasn't ready to give a definitive answer as to what causes sexuality but the question got him talking.
"There's no scientific conclusion (being gay is) genetic. We don't know that," he said. "So we don't know to what extent, you know, it's behavioral, and that's something that's been debated by scientists for a long time. But as I understand the science, there's no current conclusion that it's genetic."
This debate comes as the repeal of the military's ban on open gay or lesbians solders is being implemented, a repeal Pawlenty opposed but one Lady Gaga supported, and worked toward. The first openly gay member of a board that advises the President on West Point, Brenda S. Fulton, has been appointed to help with the transition to an open military in which gays and lesbians do not have to hide their sexuality.
