Lie — There is no gay agenda

The Story

The myth of a gay agenda was created by the homophobic media and the fundamental religious right.

One person in ten is homosexual, but most of them have been forced by society to hide their orientation.

Gay people are just like everyone else; they simply happen to be attracted to people of the same sex. All gays want is to experience the same rights as everyone else.

There was no great conspiracy to inflict homosexuality on the rest of society, and certainly not to destroy or even change that society.

Facts

The Overhauling of Straight America

It's true, there really was no massive conspiracy. Secret organizations didn't form, devising ways to manipulate society from the background. Instead, thousands of people took individual responsibility to forward the movement using a common plan. Many, or perhaps even most, weren't even aware of the original publication, but just went along with what seemed like a good idea.

In 1987, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen published an essay called The Overhauling of Straight America. In it, they laid out a six-point plan for their campaign to change American society:

  • Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible.
  • Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers.
  • Give homosexual protectors a just cause.
  • Make gays look good.
  • Make the victimizers look bad.
  • Solicit funds.

The essay begins:

The first order of business is desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitize the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion.

This essay was later expanded into the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the '90s.

Strategy

Supporters were encouraged to present themselves, as much as possible, as no different from everyone else except in one aspect: whom they love. Only after society had been converted to consider gays as different from other people in only this one way would other aspects of their eventual goal be introduced. More flamboyant people were encouraged to stay in the background, and anything related to gay society, transmissible diseases and rectal damage, promiscuity, or lifestyle was to be ignored or dismissed as fringe behaviour.

Many of the goals were presented as rights, making it look not as gaining something new, but as simply recovering something to which they were already entitled. Anyone that even questioned these goals was called homophobic, and that word soon became a very negative and anti-social attribute.

Success

During the 1990s much of the entertainment media incorporated these almost-straight-behaving gays into their scripts. At first this was in minor roles where their orientation was irrelevant to the story, and the characters were presented as just being part of everyday life. The initial shock of seeing these characters soon wore off, and viewers simply accepted the situation. Later, more leading roles were introduced, with their orientation playing a more significant part of the story (e.g. Will and Grace).

Once it had become politically incorrect to say anything negative about sexual orientation, programs such as Glee took the message to people that hadn't yet accepted the new order. That show's Glee Club was a collection of social misfits that the rest of the student population picked on without justification. The audience felt pity for these people, and in some ways identified with their being bullied. Within that group, Kurt Hummel was introduced as a kind and gentle character who was especially bullied. As time went on, it became more and more obvious that Kurt was gay, and that this was the main reason for his being singled out. By then, the audience had transferred its sympathy for the picked on group to this picked on individual. This process created a new generation of viewers ready to defend someone that was attacked simply for liking people of the same sex.

Other situations are used to confuse the audience, such as The Big Bang Theory, where a unquestionably straight character is portrayed as having stereotypical gay characteristics.

Today, it's almost impossible to see a movie or television program that doesn't include gay characters in significant roles.

Future Direction

Gay's having the same legal rights as straight people isn't enough though. It's not sufficient to win, the enemy has to be seen to lose. Having a legal equivalent of marriage isn't enough; the religious institution of marriage itself needs to be redefined, destroying its meaning and significance for those that previously opposed the movement. Gay couples' being legally allowed to adopt children isn't enough; the societal institution of family needs to be redefined, similarly destroying its meaning and significance for those that cherished it.

The movement has now progressed far beyond gaining rights for gays. Many kinds of behaviour that were previously considered sexual perversion or mental illness are now attached to the homophobic label. Not only laws, but medical textbooks are being rewritten to accommodate the new view. Even new kinds of washrooms are being legislated to accommodate not people's physical needs, but their perceived mental needs.

Prevalence

While it might seem that there is a relatively high percentage of gay people, this is largely caused by the higher than average number of gay people in high profile professions. The entertainment and artistic communities have especially high concentrations, and these are the people that provide most other people's view of the world through the news and entertainment industries. Some jurisdictions have allowed gay couples to marry and adopt children for quite a few years now, but while they are frequently featured in the news, the actual number of people doing this is very small.

Beyond this natural apparent prevalence, this impression is further exaggerated by writers and others that want to further encourage this view. In fact, the prevalence of homosexuality is more like one or two percent, not the ten percent that has been historically claimed. And even though many recent surveys have show a large increase in the number of youth that are self-identifying as homosexual, this apparent increase is caused not by any real change in the population, but by youth having grown up in a society highly accepting of homosexuality and therefore having no qualms about saying they might be homosexual just because they once briefly experienced such feelings during their confusing teens.

Why

If the movement had formed any official organization, the conspiracy would have been too obvious, and the opposition would likely have been able to suppress it. The agenda, the conspiracy, or whatever it was, simply happened without any centralized coordination. Fortunately for the non-organizers of this non-conspiracy, the entertainment industry has always had more than its share of gay people, greatly enabling the implementation of the strategy.