“One of the things that is wrong is that the public in general seems to look at the “big picture” when it comes to “gays”. Oh, it’s so cool, Queer Eye, all the “gay” decorators, etc.”
“The Overhauling of Straight America”: “Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers. In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined be reflex to assume the role of protector...A media campaign to promote the Gay Victim image should make use of symbols which reduce ther mainstream’s sense of threat, which lower its guard, and which enhance the plausibility of victimization... sympathetic figures of nice young people, old people, and attractive women would be featured...Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as victims...To this end, the persons featured in the public campaign should be decent and upright, appealing and admirable.
“Make gays look good. In norder to make a Gay Victim sympathetic to straights you have to portray him as Everyman. But an additional theme of the campaign should be more aggressive and upbeat: to offset the increasingly bad press” (my note: this article was written in 1987) “that these times have brought to homosexual men and women, the campaign should paint gays as superior pillars of society. Yes, yes, we know — this trick is so old it creaks. Other minorities use it all the time in ads that announce proudly, “Did you know that this Great Man (or Woman) was _____?”
The strategy is working.
Great insight. Here is a link to the entire article.
http://www.article8.org/docs/gay_strategies/overhauling.htm