Journal of Language and Sexuality 1:2 (2012), 230–255. doi 10.1075/jls.1.2.05sea issn 2211–3770 / e-issn 2211–3789 © John Benjamins Publishing Company When a ‘non-issue’ becomes an issue in discourse surrounding LGBT communities Corinne A. Seals Georgetown University Tis paper uses the theory of intertextuality to examine the discourse surround- ing California’s Proposition 8, the statewide ballot measure to reverse legaliza- tion of same-sex marriage. More specifcally, this paper analyzes the newspaper reports that surfaced in February 2010, concerned with the fact that the judge deciding the case is a gay man. Te initial story, which claimed that this should be a ‘non-issue,’ sparked a multitude of articles aimed at diferent readerships over the following week, therein making the ‘non-issue’ an issue. I analyze how intertextuality is used by three types of news sources (LGBT, mainstream, and Religious Right) to report the same issue but in ways specifcally aimed at the ideal reader of each. I argue that the way intertextuality occurs in constructed dialogue, lexical choice, and semantic presupposition creates an ideological mes- sage meant for and decodable by each publication’s ideal reader, therein reinforc- ing group ideologies about LGBT issues. Keywords: Proposition 8, intertextuality, media discourse, ideal reader, ideology, LGBT 1. Introduction 1 Expressions of ideology 2 are ever-present in discourse 3 and are a strong marker of social group membership. In fact, “ideologies infuence our daily texts and talk, how we understand ideological discourse, and how discourse is involved in the reproduction of ideology in society,” (van Dijk 2003: 4). Terefore, the link be- tween discourse and ideology is well established. Te understanding of this rela- tionship has been applied time and again to socially motivated discourses, such as those about race, ethnicity, gender, or government (Fairclough 2001, Sclafani 2008, Talbot 1995, Tetela 2001). However, there still remain ideological dis- courses in every-day settings surrounding contentious social issues. Furthermore,