Selling Homosexuality to America

Regent University Law Review ^ | Spring 2002 | Paul E. Rondeau

[quidnunc]

I. Introduction

Among America's culture wars, one of today's most intense controversies rages around the issue alternatively identified, depending on one's point of view, as "normalizing homosexuality" or "accepting gayness." The debate is truly a social-ethical-moral conceptual war that transcends both the scientific and legal, though science and law most often are the weapons of choice. The ammunition for these weapons, however, is persuasion.

This article explores how gay rights [3] activists use rhetoric, psychology, social psychology, and the media — all the elements of modern marketing — to position homosexuality in order to frame what is discussed in the public arena and how it is discussed. In essence, when it comes to homosexuality, activists want to shape "what everyone knows" and "what everyone takes for granted" even if everyone does not really know and even if it should not be taken for granted. [4]

The first strategy of persuasion is to establish a favorable climate for your message so that the communicator (marketer) can influence the future decision without even appearing to be persuading. Pratkanis and Aronson refer to this as pre-selling. [5] This is at the heart of the homosexual campaign: to get consent via social construct today to determine whose idea of personal freedoms will prevail in our legal codes tomorrow.

Part II of this article provides a brief overview of the social climate and politics that ultimately led to the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) imprimatur of homosexual behavior. The declassification of homosexuality as a disorder by the APA provides context for the propaganda war proposed by Kirk and Madsen's homosexual manifesto fifteen years later. The section ends by reviewing the main elements of the campaign including the call to specifically discredit, intimidate, and silence opponents with particular attention paid to conservative Christians.

Part III presents the connection between persuasion and democratic processes. Rhetoric, persuasive communication, propaganda, and social psychology theories are foundational to the concept of selling homosexuality as presented in this article. The purpose of this section is to provide a greater understanding of why persuasion works in order to strengthen the later discussion of how it is applied in the mass persuasion techniques evidenced in today's "gay rights"-style marketing.

Part IV moves to the "4-P's" of the traditional marketing paradigm — Product, Price, Place, and Promotion — to deconstruct and to illustrate how homosexuality is packaged and sold as a competitive product in the marketplace often through education [6] and through positive media coverage. "What is pitched is different — a product brand versus an issue — but the method is the same. In each case, the critical thing is not to let the public know how it is done," [7] states Tammy Bruce, a self-described lesbian feminist and ex-president of the Los Angles chapter of the National Organization for Women. [8]

Part V presents several real examples of how this strategy is employed in five important markets of social influence. The areas examined, which touch every citizen in America, are government, education, organized religion, the media, and the workplace.

Part VI concludes by recapping some achievements of the gay rights campaign and discussing what these may portend for their opponents and American society in the future.

-snip-

[EdReform]

"The most vile hater of homosexuality couldn't do to these men and their community what they did to themselves. As sad as it sounds, if the statistics are right, the problem will take care of itself in not very many years."

You're my nominee for post of the month.

Ditto. Excellent post!

[Joe_October]

Thanks for the praise. Sorry it was for such a sad reason.

You want to know what's worst?

What the US Liberal community did to the black community in the US in the name of helping them. Single parent homes. Obscene percentages of the men in jail or dead. A community headed for utter destruction. Done in the name of helping them. There weren't enough bed sheets in the South for the KKK to do to black Americans what the Liberals did. And the leaders of the black community begged for more.

Tragic.

[lentulusgracchus]

There weren't enough bed sheets in the South for the KKK to do to black Americans what the Liberals did. And the leaders of the black community begged for more.

Yeah, occasionally I wonder what those old Bookerites think about it all, looking down from their cloud at all this stuff that their descendants have gotten into.

They won't have forgotten that the NAACP was started by a bunch of white guys, either.

Thanks for everything, Dr. DuBois.

[lentulusgracchus]

Well, you can't completely dismiss anyone who has read Tammy Bruce for comprehension (I haven't yet) without trying to do a liberal deconstruction of her observations.

[FUMETTI]

It was a valient effort, to be sure. ;-)

[Woahhs]

I think, perhaps, the dismissal was premature.

[RinaseaofDs]

SB is just another Kerry/DNC/Moby lurker here to spread confusion and discontent.

[expatguy]

OMG is that what is being shown on television now in the States???

Why have you people not set fire to the television stations yet???

[Woahhs]

It was a valient effort, to be sure. ;-)

I'll be watching my email Prince "Valient."

[EdReform]

BTTT for later reference...

[Woahhs]

Welcome back...

[FUMETTI]

I never left, twinkle toes. Where were you?

[Krodg]

What the article is doing is pointing out how there is a deliberate campaign by the homosexual community to normalize homosexuality and insert it into the mainstream of American society as just another lifestyle.

There was a thread at DU that certainly backs that up...

Has homosexuality ever been accepted in society?

Someone here must know the answer to this. I was thinking about how long it would take this society to accept gay marriage, then I figured that homosexuality has been around as long as man has been around. Somewhere in the time spectrum of back then to now, there must have been a society somewhere that accepted homosexuality as normal....

They do have an agenda and it's scary.