“All churches who condemn us will be closed,” boasted Michael Swift in a February 1987 issue of the Gay Community News. He went on to write, “We shall sodomize your sons.... We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups…”(1)

The outrageous claims of this now-infamous article were dismissed by most readers at the time as so much bombastic nonsense. However, exactly one year later, a “war conference” was held outside Washington D.C. by 175 of the nation’s leading homosexual activists to lay out a strategy to homosexualize America.

Among those in attendance were two men who believed they knew how to accomplish this goal. Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen laid out what they considered to be a surefire method of overcoming all opposition to the total acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle.

<pull-quote>We shall sodomize your sons.... We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups…<pull-quote>

“Kirk and Madsen were not the kind of drooling activists that would burst into churches and throw condoms in the air,” writes David Kupelian for World Net Daily. “They were smart guys – very smart. Kirk, a Harvard-educated researcher in neuropsychiatry, worked with the Johns Hopkins Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth and designed aptitude tests for adults with 200+ IQs. Madsen, with a doctorate in politics from Harvard, was an expert on public persuasion tactics and social marketing.”(2)

Kirk and Madsen emerged from the conference with a mandate to lay out their strategy to the homosexual community. Their original article was developed and expanded into a best-selling book entitled, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s.

“The campaign we outline in this book,” they write, “though complex, depends centrally upon a program of unabashed propaganda, firmly grounded in long-established principles of psychology and advertising.”(3) Their book became known as the Gay Manifesto.

Winning the Public

The strategy that Kirk and Madsen devised called for three basic steps: desensitizing, “jamming” and converting.

Desensitization required presenting a constant, positive image of homosexuals to the American public. This tactic has been successfully employed in, and assisted by, the media. It began with TV programs such as “Will and Grace” and “Queer As Folk” that presented likeable gay characters to win the hearts of their viewers. In short, television producers have effectively sold the American people on the idea that gays are really no different than “straights.”

“The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome,” Kirk and Madsen write. “If you can get [straights] to think homosexuality is just another thing—meriting no more than a shrug of the shoulders—then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won.”

Just as important in their overall scheme has been the ploy of “jamming” their opponents; in other words, discrediting and defaming anyone who disagrees with them. “We intend to make the antigays look so nasty that average Americans will want to disassociate themselves from such types.”(4) Exactly how would they accomplish this feat? They would characterize conservatives and Christians as “homohating bigots.” Kirk and Madsen write: “[Our propaganda] can show them being criticized, hated, shunned. It can depict gays experiencing horrific suffering as the direct result of homohatred—suffering of which even most bigots would be ashamed to be the cause.”

<pull-quote>If you can get [straights] to think homosexuality is just another thing—meriting no more than a shrug of the shoulders—then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won.<pull-quote>

A perfect example of this is the movie “Philadelphia,” in which actor Tom Hanks plays a suffering homosexual who is being egregiously persecuted by fellow lawyers. Hanks played the part so effectively that audiences were left feeling overwhelming sympathy for the plight of the homosexual and tremendous disdain for those who oppose their lifestyle. The film industry rewarded Hanks with an Academy Award for his stellar performance. Finally, according to the strategy developed by Kirk and Madsen, people must be converted from merely sympathizing into overtly supporting the gay community. The activist-writers predicted there would be a mass public change of heart, “if we can actually make them like us.”

“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,” they continue. “We mean ‘subverting’ the mechanism of prejudice to our own ends – using the very processes that made America hate us to turn their hatred into warm regard – whether they like it or not.”

Attacking the Church

The temptation at this point is to accept at face value the claims of gay activists that all they want is equal protection under the law. However, they have long since won that battle. The truth is, they want much more: the complete silencing of opposing voices.
Kirk and Madsen call for a two-pronged approach to neutralizing the Christian-led opposition.

First, they must “muddy the moral waters… [by] publicizing support for gays by more moderate churches” and “raising theological objections of our own about conservative interpretations of biblical teachings.”

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“This has been done with amazing success in mainline Protestant denominations, such as in the Episcopal Church USA, United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Presbyterian Church USA,” writes Ed Vitigliano of the American Family Association. “Homosexual activists in each of these major denominations have so clouded the issues regarding the biblical view of homosexuality as to threaten each with schism and ruin.”

Ultimately, conservative denominations and organizations which continue to resist this denigration of moral values must be viciously defamed: “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,” write Kirk and Madsen. “To be blunt, they must be vilified.”

Hate Crimes

The final step in the strategy to silence all opposition is to push for legislation that will actually criminalize criticism of the homosexual lifestyle. In this aspect of the plan, gay activists have a willing supporter in the mainstream news.

For example, after the tragic 1998 murder of homosexual student Matthew Shepherd, Katie Couric of NBC’s Today Show interviewed Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer. She asked, “Some gay rights activists have said that some conservative political organizations like the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family are contributing to this anti-homosexual atmosphere by having an ad campaign saying if you are a homosexual you can change your orientation. That prompts people to say, ‘If I meet someone who’s homosexual, I’m going to take action to try to convince them or try to harm them.’ Do you believe that such groups are contributing to this climate?” It goes without saying that the posing of a question like this on the national media has a tremendous impact on the public’s perspective of the Church.

The accumulated impact of Kirk and Madsen’s highly successful strategy has brought so much pressure on lawmakers that a number of states have already passed “Hate Crimes” laws. Other nations are even further along in this process.

<pull-quote>The final step in the strategy to silence all opposition is to push for legislation that will actually criminalize criticism of the homosexual lifestyle.<pull-quote>

Sweden’s parliament, on the cutting edge of homosexual rights, passed a similar bill in 2002. This law criminalized “hate speech,” including anything expressed in “church sermons.”

The following year, a Pentecostal pastor named Ake Green delivered a message to his congregation in which he described homosexuality as “abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumor in the body of society.” He went on to say that they were “perverts, whose sexual drive the Devil has used as his strongest weapon against God.”

While his wording may be harsh, Pastor Green should still have the right to rail against the evils of the day in his own church. Public prosecutor Kjell Yngvesson disagreed, reportedly saying: “One may have whatever religion one wishes, but [the sermon] is an attack on all fronts against homosexuals. Collecting Bible [verses] on this topic as he does makes this hate speech.”

This is the legal environment to which America (and indeed, all of Western Civilization) has found itself. What can Christians expect to face in the future? “Their campaign,” states David Kupelian, “will not end until Christians and other traditionalists opposing homosexuality are shut up, discredited, and utterly silenced…”

Steve Warren, a spokesman for the homosexual group ACT UP, wholeheartedly agrees: “We have captured the liberal establishment and the press. We have already beaten you on a number of battlefields. And we have the spirit of the age on our side. You have neither the faith nor the strength to fight us, so you might as well surrender now.”

While his conclusion is unthinkable, his analysis of our condition may very well be accurate. I pray that there will be those who will continue to stand for righteousness, fighting for lost souls and speaking the truth about sexual sin. But I fear that too many will remain silent, cowering in the face of homosexual intimidation. May God grant us courage to withstand this rising tide of evil.