After the Ball, How Sodomy Was Sold to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
Sodomy, n. A crime against nature.
 
(American Dictionary of the English language, Noah Webster 1828.)
 
Words mean something.  Noah Webster knew that well.  Just hearing the word sodomy sounds harsh.  This is evidence of how far we have slid.
 
"Whoever, therefore wishes to ruin a nation, has only to get this vice introduced; for it is extremely difficult to extirpate it where it has once taken root because it can be propagated with much secrecy… and when we perceive that it has once got a footing in any country, however, powerful and flourishing, we may venture as politicians to predict that the foundation of its future decline is laid and that after some hundred years it will no longer be the same…powerful country it is at the present."  (Sir John David Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, 1814.
 
In 1988, 74.9% of the American Public thought that sex between two people of the same gender was always wrong.  By 1998, the percentage had fallen to 54.6% (National Opinion research Center, The University of Chicago.)
 
Perhaps no other movement in the history of America has had so much success in such a short time.  We must examine the homosexual agenda's success in changing American Culture and attempting to redefine the family, not only to understand how to combat it, but to provide a glimpse of the potential of the American Church if only we were so vocal and dedicated. 
 
The Homosexual Agenda
 
The strategy was revealed 20 years ago in a 1987 article titled, "The Overhauling of Straight America," and a 1989 book titled "After the Ball." In which two radicalized homosexual activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen published their plan.  Both Kirk and Madsen were highly educated men.  Kirk was a Harvard educated researcher in neuropsychiatry, and Madsen had a doctorate in politics from Harvard, and was an expert on public persuasion tactics and social marketing. (The Marketing of Evil, David Kupelian, p.23)
 
Their strategy was six fold:
 

1. Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and often as possible.
2. Portray gays as victims, not aggressive challengers.
3. Give homosexual protectors a "just" cause.
4. Make gays look good.
5. Make the victimizers look bad.
6. Solicit Funds(Get corporate America and major foundations to financially support the homosexual cause. (The Homosexual Agenda: (Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.  Alan Sears & Craig Osten, p. 18)

 
Let's briefly examine these strategies.
 
 
Firstly, Kirk and Madsen in The Overhauling of Straight America, write in regards to talking about gays and gayness, "The principal behind this advice is simple: almost all behavior begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close quarters and among your acquaintances." (Sears and Osten p. 18)
 
 "The main thing is talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome."  According to Sears and Osten this will have one of two effects.  "1.  It convinces people that homosexual behavior is just another lifestyle, or 2. causes them to get so sick of the issue that they throw their hands up in disgust or become exhausted and then withdraw.  Either way the homosexual activists win." (Sears and Osten 17-18)
 
Portraying homosexuals as an oppressed victim is the second part of Madsen and Kirk's strategy because it plays into all Americans sense of fairness.  This can be seen in the framing of the AIDS debate (primarily spread by homosexual behavior) as a civil rights issue (AIDS was formally called GRIDS, G stands for 'Gay") He who frames the argument wins.
 
This was also seen through the Matthew Shepherd murder case when two non-religious men killed another man for drugs.  The case was blown up by the national media to be a homophobic hate crime spurred on by "hateful" evangelicals preaching against sin.  In the media Christians are then compared to Hitler and the KKK, instead of Mother Theresa, William Wilberforce (the Christian who abolished the British slave-trade), and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
By piggybacking on the civil rights issue and slandering blacks, homosexuality has become the cause de jour to appeal to liberal sensitivities of fairness and justice.  The "Gay Rights" issue is now seen as a "just cause." Examples of this in Hollywood are the film Philadelphia, where Tom Hanks is fired from his job by discriminating hate-mongers, and Broke Back Mountain where Heath Ledger can't really live out the true love and life he wants because of an oppressive society.  Rather than showing two men living in San Francisco with high discretionary income and a lavish lifestyle they are shown as oppressed and victimized.  This idea of making the homosexual appear oppressed and the victimizer bad can adroitly be perpetuated showing scenes of Fred Phelps, (of God Hates Fags lore) protesting funerals which furthers the myth that Christians are mean and bigoted people.
 
Lastly, soliciting funds for radicalized homosexual groups has been widely successful.  Ford Motors, Kraft, Home Depot, Proctor & Gamble and many more corporations indirectly or directly contribute to the advancement of the homosexual agenda. They do this through sponsorship, advertising, donations, and legislative endorsement.  Careful coordination with corporations and the media have been tools in the propaganda campaign to mainstream homosexual sodomy.  These are the engines that drive the homosexual activist groups such as GLSEN (which are proliferating our schools), and Equality Forum (A lobbying and legislative homosexual group.)
 
 Eric Pollard, the founder of ACT-UP (a militant homosexual group) claimed Hitler's Mein Kampf as a model for the "gay" agenda. (Sears and Osten, p. 26)
 
"Something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick- a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this world know only too well and also make the most treacherous use of…   By clever and persevering use of propaganda even heaven can be represented as hell to the people, and conversely the most wretched life as paradise." (Mein Kampf) 
 
 Kirk and Madsen reiterate Pollards ideas, "We have in mind a strategy as calculated and powerful as that which gays are accused of employing by their enemies.  It's time to learn from Madison Avenue, to roll out the big guns.  Gays must launch a large scale campaign to reach straights through the mainstream media.  We're talking about propaganda." (Sears and Osten p. 27)  So far they are achieving their carefully laid out goals.
 
The Human Face of Homosexuality
 
We all know friends who are "gay", and many are genuinely nice people. 
 
What is the real face of homosexuality?  Is it the radicalized homosexual trying to legalize sex between men and boys (NAMBLA)? Is it someone like Rosie O' Donnell or Ellen?  Or is it our coworker or family member, our son or our daughter?  Is it the people who shut down the local parks for public sex within eyesight of children, leaving condoms strewn around the park?  Perhaps it is all of these for sin has degrees of evil. 
 
In my own life I see various shades of this sin that traps so many.  A friend of mine once shared with me that he watched his father commit suicide when he was 15.  Since then he has engaged in hundreds of acts with other men and is currently in a "monogamous relationship."    Perhaps he is seeking the love of the father he never got.  Another young man I know suffered seizures, and increasing paralysis, and died earlier this year from AIDS which he contracted from earlier involvement in homosexual sin.  Two friends I know have parents that left their families for another "same sex" partner.  Their families have been torn asunder.  Behind the glitzy glamour of Hollywood are real people with real sin which has real consequences.  Who will speak the truth to these people, to these families?
 
Counting the Cost
 
Last year I submitted a resolution to the State Convention of Ohio Baptists urging Christian parents to pull their children out of public school and either home school or provide Christian private education.  It was a wakeup call to pastors and parents in our state newspaper due to the advancing homosexual agenda and Darwinian dogma in public schools.  Within the next few weeks homosexual activists wrote in and repeated the tired old saw calling me a bigot, or exclaiming that I was spreading hate.  One person said there was no gay agenda in schools that the only agenda was for her to get up go to work and pay taxes like every "normal" American.  Being called names in a newspaper or blog is a small price to pay.  In the future it may not be so easy.
 
We have already seen in Canada where a free speech chill has come after the passing of hate crimes legislation.  The same legislation is being advanced in America (SB 777 in California, and through hate crimes bills.)  Canadian Pastors have been fined for speaking out against homosexuality.  Programs like Focus on the Family are not able to be aired in Canada. 
 
It is time to count the cost.  We have all the freedoms and opportunity now to confront this sin.  But time is running out. Will we sit cowardly in our stained glass fortresses while Sir John David Michaelis' words ring prophetic towards America, "that the foundation of its future decline is laid?"
 
If a 1-2 percent minority can change the face of American Culture and public policy, then anything can be achieved.
 
We have both the numbers, and the truth.  If speaking the truth is a hate crime.  Let us be found guilty.
 
It's time for Christians to "get after the ball." 
 
Nicholas A. Jackson
 
Nick is Executive Director of Reform America. In addition, he spends time as a free-lance writer articulating the Christian viewpoint into our culture. "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in." Isaiah 58:12
 
Website: www.reformamerica.com Email: [email protected]
 
Resources: The Marketing of Evil, by David Kupelian
                   The Homosexual Agenda, by Alan Sears and Craig Osten