Tactics of the Homosexual Movement Page 1 of 8

We have been manipulated and corrupted

Tactics of the
Homosexual Movement
1987 “Overhauling of Straight America”
Detailed Strategy for public acceptance of Homosexuals

by John Vennari

In late February, Barack Obama announced that he and his

Justice Department would no longer defend the Defense of
Marriage Act [DOMA], claiming the act was “unconstitutional”.
The 1996 Act states that in federal law, “the word ‘marriage’
means only a legal union between one man and one woman as
husband and wife.”[1] It prohibits the federal government from
recognizing same-sex “marriages” for the purpose of taxes, social
security and other programs.

It appears obvious Obama is working to clear a path for federal

recognition of what is called same-sex “marriage”. Recent polls
indicate that an increasing number of Americans find same-sex
“marriage” acceptable, which tells us more about the moral
bankruptcy of America than its present competence to recognize
objective moral law.

“The Overhauling of Straight
America” by Marshal E. Kirk
and Hunter Madsen was
expanded into the 1989 book,
After the Ball, How America
Will Conquer Its Fear and
Hatred of Gays in the 90s. It is a
blueprint of media and
psychology manipulation for
widespread public acceptance
of homosexuality. One of Kirk
and Madsen’s key strategies is
to vilify their oppoents: “We
intend to make the anti-gays
look so nasty that average
Americans will want to
disassociate themselves from
such types.”
Obama’s recent statements regarding DOMA provide the
opportunity to pose the question: how is it that homosexuality
and same-sex “marriage” is now accepted by so many
individuals?
There are various contributing factors, most notable being the
collapse of countless Catholic theologians and prelates in
teaching true Catholic moral law, and the breakdown in
authority since Vatican II. Modern Church leaders no longer
discipline Catholic teachers who propound principles and
practices contrary to natural and Divine law.[2]
Other forces have been at work, not least of which is the
strategies of homosexual activists themselves.

“The Overhauling of Straight America”

Our focus here will be on the effective tactics employed by the homosexual
movement, particularly spelled out in the 1987 landmark article “The Overhauling of
Straight America” by homosexual activists Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill. (“Erastes Pill”
was the pen name for Hunter Madsen).

Both of these men were highly educated. Kirk was a Harvard educated researcher in
neuropsychiatry; Madsen had a doctorate in politics from Harvard and was an expert on

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public persuasion tactics and social marketing.

It is said “The Overhauling of Straight America” has become the “bible” of the
homosexual movement, as it presents strategies both to make homosexuals more
acceptable, and to demonize opponents of homosexuality. The entire campaign is based not
on intellectual arguments, but on emotional manipulation of the public. (Kirk & Madsen
later expanded the principles in the article to a 398-page book After the Ball: How America
Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s).

For now, we will focus on their original 1987 article. In order to convey the true spirit of
the piece, we will rely as much as possible on direct quotation.

Published in the 1987 edition of Guide, a homosexual publication, “The Overhauling of

Straight America” begins:

“The first order of business is desensitization of the American public concerning gays and
gay rights. To desensitize the pubic is to help it view homosexuality with indifference
instead of keen emotion.” The authors go on to note their goal to make sexual preference
placed on a par with preferences in ice cream flavors or sports. You prefer chocolate, I
prefer butter pecan. You prefer hockey, I prefer baseball. No problem.

“At least in the beginning”, they write, “we are seeking public desensitization and nothing
more. We do not need and cannot expect full ‘appreciation’ or ‘understanding’ of
homosexuality from the average America. You can forget about trying to persuade the
masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if you can only get them to think that is just
another thing, with a shrug of the shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is
virtually won. And to get to shoulder-shrug state, gays as a class must cease to appear
mysterious, alien and contrary.” The article calls for a massive media campaign to change
the image of homosexuals, “and any campaign to accomplish this turnaround should
accomplish six things.”

The following six steps are directly lifted from the Kirk/Pill article:

Step 1: Talk About Gays and Gayness as Loudly and as Often as Possible

“The principle behind this advice is simple”, say Kirk and Pill, “almost any behavior
begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close quarters and among your
acquaintances. The acceptability of the new behavior will ultimately hinge on the number of
one’s fellows doing it or accepting it.” A person may be offended initially by the novelty of it
all, but the authors point out “as long as Joe-Six-pack feels little pressure to perform
likewise, and as long as the behavior in question presents little threat to his physical and
financial security, he soon gets used to it and life goes on.” As time goes on, Joe-Six pack
and his friends will become more tolerant of homosexuality as no more than an alternative,
legitimate way of life.

“The way to benumb raw sensibilities about homosexuality is to have a lot of people talk a
great deal about the subject in a neutral or supportive way.” The more it is talked about, the
more the impression is created that public opinion is at least divided on the topic. “Even
rancorous debates between opponents and defenders serve our purpose so long as
‘respectable’ gays are front and center to make their own pitch.”

The authors also insist that this talk about “gayness” must be talk, not homosexualist
indoctrination. “In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight American, the masses

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should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself.
Instead, the imagery of sex should be downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an
abstract social question as much as possible.”

The authors stress the importance of having homosexual issues talked about in the visual
media, film and television, which are “the most powerful image-makers in Western
civilization.” At the time, the average American spent a good seven hours or more per day in
front of the TV. “Those hours open a gateway into the private world of straights, through
which a Trojan horse might be passed.”

Hollywood is described by the authors as the best covert weapon homosexuals have to
desensitize the mainstream. They applaud the fact that over the past 10 years (up to 1987)
homosexual characters have become prominent in films and television programs.

Since then, these characters have become even more common, and it is all part of the
strategy to mobilize public acceptance of homosexuality. Witness, for example, television’s
Will & Grace or The L Word; movies such as Brokeback Mountain, and likable homosexual
characters with prominent roles in films such as Bridget Jones Diary and As Good As it
Gets. Amiable homosexual characters increasingly feature in modern film and television,
and it is no accident.

Kirk and Pill then lay out their full scale assault on religion. “While public opinion is one
primary source of mainstream values, religious authority is the other. When conservative
churches condemn gays, there are only two things we can do to confound the homophobia
of true believers. First we can use talk to muddy the moral waters. This means publicizing
support for gays by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own
about conservative interpretation of Biblical teaching and exposing hatred and
inconsistency.”

They continue, “Second, we can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches
by portraying them as antiquated and backwards, badly out of step with the times and with
the latest findings of psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional Religion one must
set the mightier draw of Science and Public Opinion (the shield and swords of that accursed
‘secular humanism’). Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches
before, on such topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the
prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can work here again.”[3]

Step 2: 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 by reflex to assume the role of protector. If
gays are presented, instead, as a strong and prideful tribe
promoting a rigidly nonconformist and deviant lifestyle,
they are more likely to be seen as a public menace that
justifies resistance and oppression. For that reason, we
must forego the temptation to strut our ‘gay pride’
publicly when it conflicts with the Gay Victim image. And
we must walk the fine line between impressing straights
with our great numbers, on the one hand, and sparking

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Hollywood is described by the their hostile paranoia —’They are all around us!’ — on the
authors as the best covert
weapon homosexuals have to
other.
desensitize the mainstream. “A media campaign to promote the Gay Victim
They applaud the fact that image should make use of symbols which reduce the
homosexual characters
increasingly have become mainstream’s sense of threat, which lower its guard, and
prominent in films and which enhance the plausibility of victimization. In
television programs. practical terms, this means that jaunty mustachioed
musclemen would keep very low profile in gay
commercials and other public presentations, while sympathetic figures of nice young
people, old people, and attractive women would be featured. (It almost goes without saying
that groups on the farthest margin of acceptability such as NAMBLA, [North American
Man-Boy Love Association] must play no part at all in such a campaign: suspected child-
molesters will never look like victims).”

Kirk & Pill outline two different messages about the “Gay Victim” that must be
communicated. “First, the mainstream should be told that gays are victims of fate, in the
sense that most never had a choice to accept or reject their sexual preference. The message
must read: ‘As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as you were born heterosexual or
white or black or bright or athletic. Nobody ever tricked or seduced them; they never made
a choice, and are not morally blameworthy. What they do isn’t willfully contrary - it’s only
natural for them. This twist of fate could as easily have happened to you!’”

This strategy is in place all around us. Witness the vile Lady Gaga and her recent
music release, “Born this Way”. Witness also the rabid hatred of homosexuals against
groups such as Courage or Exodus Now that help men and women defeat their
homosexuality. If homosexuality can be overcome, then this destroys the false argument
that homosexuals are victims of fate who can do nothing to change themselves.
Kirk and Pill continue, “Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as
victims. Mr. and Mrs. Public must be given no extra excuses to say, ‘they are not like us.’ To
this end, the persons featured in the public campaign should be decent and upright,
appealing and admirable by straight standards, completely unexceptionable in appearance
— in a word, they should be indistinguishable from the straights we would like to reach. (To
return to the terms we have used in previous articles, spokesmen for our cause must be R-
type ‘straight gays’ rather than Q-type ‘homosexuals on display.’) Only under such
conditions will the message be read correctly: ‘These folks are victims of a fate that could
have happened to me’.”

The authors go on to note that homosexuals may not look favorably on a strategy
that makes them look like victims of some sort of plague, “but the plain fact is that the gay
community is weak and must manipulate the powers of the weak, including the play for
sympathy.”

“The second message would portray gays as victims of society.”

Step 3: Give Protectors a Just Cause.

“A media campaign that casts gays as society’s victims and encourages straights to
be their protectors must make it easier for those to respond to assert and explain their new
protectiveness. Few straight women, and even fewer straight men, will want to defend
homosexuality boldly as such. Most would rather attach their awakened protective impulse

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to some principle of justice or law, to some general desire for consistent and fair
treatment in society. Our campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual
practices, should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme. The right to free speech,
freedom of beliefs, freedom of association, due process and equal protection of laws-these
should be the concerns brought to mind by our campaign.

“It is especially important for the gay movement to hitch its cause to accepted
standards of law and justice because its straight supporters must have at hand a cogent
reply to the moral arguments of its enemies. The homophobes clothe their emotional
revulsion in the daunting robes of religious dogma, so defenders of gay rights must be ready
to counter dogma with principle.”

Step 4: Make Gays Look Good

“In order 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 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 ____?’ But the message is
vital for all those straights who still picture gays as ‘queer’ people — shadowy, lonesome,
fail, drunken, suicidal, child-snatching misfits.”

The authors stress the importance of Celebrity endorsement. “The celebrities can
be straight” (such as Ed Asner) “or gay”

Step 5: Make the Victimizers look Bad

“At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights — long after other gay ads
have become commonplace — it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents. To be
blunt, they must be vilified. (This will be all the more necessary because, by that time,
the entrenched enemy will have quadrupled its output of vitriol and disinformation.) Our
goal here is twofold. First, we seek to replace the mainstream’s self-righteous pride about its
homophobia with shame and guilt. Second, we intend to make the antigays look so
nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such
types.[4]

“The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose secondary

traits and beliefs disgust middle America. These images might include: the Ku Klux Klan
demanding that gays be burned alive or castrated; bigoted southern ministers drooling with
hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs,
and convicts speaking coolly about the ‘fags’ they have killed or would like to kill; a tour of
Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.

The authors later explain, “We have already indicated some of the images which
might be damaging to the homophobic vendetta: ranting and hateful religious extremists
neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen made to look evil and ridiculous (hardly a difficult task).

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“These images should be combined with those of their gay victims by a method
propagandists call the ‘bracket technique.’ For example, for a few seconds an unctuous
beady-eyed Southern preacher is seen pounding the pulpit in rage about ‘those sick,
abominable creatures.’ While his tirade continues over the soundtrack, the picture switches
to pathetic photos of gays who look decent, harmless, and likable; and then we cut back to
the poisonous face of the preacher, and so forth. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect is
devastating.

Step 6: Solicit Funds: The Buck Stops Here

“Any massive campaign of this kind would require unprecedented expenditures for
months or even years — an unprecedented fundraising drive,” say the authors. They call
upon homosexuals to contribute heavily to this campaign. “And because those gays not
supporting families usually have more discretionary income than average, they could afford
to contribute much more.”

They go on to say, “the appeal should be directed both at gays and at straights who
care about social justice.”

Two years later in their book After the Ball, Kirk and Madsen stated clearly their plan for
mass propaganda for converting America to promote the homosexual cause. They write,
“….by conversion we mean something far more profoundly threatening to the American
Way of Life, without which no truly sweeping social change can occur. We mean conversion
of the average American’s emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological
attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media.”[5]

Vilify Christianity

In line with Kirk & Pill’s “Overhauling of Straight America”, the process of vilifying those
who oppose homosexuality is now spreading with frightful rapidity. The attack from
homosexuals is aimed primarily at Christianity.

• On a Lesbian Gay, Bisexual and Transvestite (GLBT) website dedicated to exposing

“Hate Crimes”, activists claim that pro-family organizations are engaging in hate speech
when they criticize homosexual conduct and this “hate speech” allegedly leads to hate
crimes and must be suppressed. This site equates opposition to homosexuality as equal to
Hitler’s slaughter of Jews in Europe.
• The same website also blames pro-family groups for the murder of gay college student
Matthew Shepard.[6] (Yet Matthew Shepard was killed in a robbery, not because he was
homosexual).[7]
• In 2004, a Protestant preacher in Sweden was sentenced to a month in jail for criticizing
homosexuality during a sermon he gave in his own church.[8]
• The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution blaming religious groups
for so-called “hate crimes” such as the murder of Mathew Shepard. In addition, the Board
approved a resolution urging the local media not to carry advertisements by pro-family
organizations that addressed hope for homosexuals to change.
• In New York, a billboard with a Bible verse on it was taken down under pressure from
city officials, who cited it as “hate speech.”
• In Massachusetts in 2005, parent David Parker was arrested for protesting his
elementary school child having to listen to pro-LGBT propaganda! He eventually removed

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his child from the school. He was in court for two years and lost all of his appeals.[9]

The public acceptance of homosexuals has now invaded so-called conservative

Republicans, many of whom have withdrawn any opposition to homosexuality.

• In August 2010, Glenn Beck told Fox’s Bill O’Reilly he didn’t see a problem with same-
sex marriage. This prompted the Washington Post to run a story headlined “Glenn Beck,
gay marriage advocate?”

The interview took place as follows:

O’Reilly: “Do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?”
Beck: “A threat to the country?”
O’Reilly: “Yeah, is it going to harm it in any way?”
Beck: (laughing) “No I don’t. Will the gays come and get us?”
O’Reilly: “No, OK, is it going to harm the country in any way?”
Beck: “I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: ‘If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my
pocket what difference is it to me?’“

• GOProud, a Republican homosexual organization that backs same-sex marriage and

homosexuals serving openly in the U.S. military, was a sponsor of the 2010 Conservative
Political Acton Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C, which is supposedly the largest
conservative annual gathering in the country. CPAC ignored calls from genuine conservative
groups not to allow GOProud to sponsor the conference.[10]

It is clear that the strategies and tactics laid out in “The Overhauling of Straight
America”, and in After the Ball, are playing themselves throughout the nation and in the
world. Homosexuality is now being forced on the nations as a legitimate lifestyle, to the
point where California just passed a measure that demands “Gay history” curriculum to be
taught in its public schools.[11] There can be no doubt this is the plan homosexual activists
and corrupt politicians intend to implement in all public schools throughout the nation.

We have been manipulated and corrupted.

If this trend is not stopped by solid Catholic teaching against homosexuality from the
highest places, the end result can only be the further destruction of the family, the
corruption of youth and the persecution of Christians who uphold the Biblical
condemnations of homosexuality.[12]

Notes:

[1] “House Speaker Convenes Bipartisan Group to Defend DOMA Abandoned by Obama”, Life Site News, March 8, 2011.
[2] Not to mention the strong presence of homosexuals in the Church that followed the Vatican II revolution.
[3] Emphasis added.
[4] Emphasis added.
[5] After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen
[New York: Penguin, 1989], p. 153.
[6] “H.R. 1913 Will Inevitably Fund Anti-Christian Bigotry - and Attack Bible Speech”, Traditional Values Coalition, April
17, 2009.
[7] “In 2004 a comprehensive new investigation by ABC News 20/20 concluded that homosexuality very likely wasn’t a
factor in Shepard’s murder, bur rather Shepard had been targeted for money.” The Marketing of Evil, David Kupelian,
[Nashville: WorldNetDaily Books, 2005], p. 27.
[8] “Pastor Gets Prison for Sermon”, WorldNetDaily, July 8, 2004.
[9] Traditional Values Coalition, April 17, 2009.
[10] “Why Conservatives are Abandoning the 'Gay' Issue”, David Kupelian, WorldNetDaily, August 17, 2010.
[11] “Gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people would be added to the lengthy list of social and ethnic groups that

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public schools must include in social studies lessons under a landmark bill passed Thursday by the California Senate.”, CA
Senate Bill Mandates Gay History in Schools,” Associated Press, April 14, 2011
[12] Now the men of Sodom were wicked and sinned exceedingly before the Lord. (Genesis 13:13) 24 The Lord poured
down on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. He overthrew those cities and the whole
region, all the inhabitants of the cities and the plants of the soil (Genesis 19:24-25); Just as Sodom and Gomorrah, and
neighboring cities which like them committed sins of immorality and practiced unnatural vice, have been made an
example, undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7); For this cause God has given them up to shameful lusts; for
their women have exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature; and in like manner the men also having
abandoned the natural use of woman, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men doing shameless
things and receiving in themselves the fitting recompense of their perversity. (Romans 1: 26-27)

“….by conversion [toward public acceptance of homosexuality]

we mean something far more profoundly threatening to the
American Way of Life, without which no truly sweeping social
change can occur. We mean conversion of the average
American’s emotions, mind, and will, through a planned
psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the
nation via the media.”
- Kirk & Madsen, After the Ball, page. 153.

from the May 2011 edition of

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