Gay Agenda Unearthed!

[awediot]

I found the infamous GAY AGENDA . This long lost tome of dark conspiracy, Hollywood theatrics, homopolitical brainwashing and moral undermining, counter-scapegoating and Naziriffic blame, bait and switch is the instruction manual we all are subconsciously following to take over the country. Or haven't you heard?

I had not seen this book "After the Ball" referenced for a long time. When questioning a CARM's member about our 'agenda', they suggested I Google the title (with numerous meanings, many sports and ballad references, ironically enough) and the above was the closest, lengthiest (though not supportive) hit I bothered to come across... I had heard about it before, but was unfamiliar with it and had long since forgotten the title or authors. I'm sure some of you bookworms out there have it right next to your Bibles (they seem to think so), So, what do you think of it? Recomended reading or militant psychobabble? It is our manifesto after all...

(btw, I thanked the carm guy for the info. and encouragement. Don't think thats what he intended, but live and learn...)

[Zerbie]

Oh yes, this.

I owned that book for a while, got it from the bargain books section at Barnes & Noble for a couple dollars. Read it, didn't particularly connect with it at the time.

I have noticed recently that all of a sudden (and that book is well over 15 years old!) it is being referenced by several right-wing types as The Authoritative Agenda that we are supposedly all following. That strikes me as incredibly funny, since I found it not a particularly striking book, and also I have a feeling most other LGBTs and allies are unaware of its existence.

They reference it because there is a chapter (near the end I believe) where the authors list their suggestions for how the national gay activist organizations should proceed, strategy-wise. Authors, hmmm, names Kirk and Madsen come to mind - I bet that's it.

Anyway, I don't have the book anymore. Read it once in the early 90s, left it on the bedroom shelf when I went away to school. Then, I still have a gripe about this maneuvre, my mom threw out all my books related to LGBTs and gay rights when she found out I had gotten engaged to a man. Yep, she cleared the whole shelf and tossed 'em. I wish I had those books with me now, and I would in particular like to look over After The Ball again. All I remember is that I didn't like it very much.

[schoolboi]

Here is my favorite version of the "agenda" fromBASH- Baptists Are Saving Homosexuals

[Rick336]

I've seen this book referenced on many anti-gay web sites as THE book for the "HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA" as if all of us own a copy and follow every supposed suggestion on how to pull the wool over the eyes of America.

I've been active in gays rights for a long time and I've never heard of this book. And my guess is that 99% of the GLBT community hasn't either.

I haven't read the book so I can't make a judgement about it. But there's no reason for gay people to try to decieve America. To decieve them would mean that we've got some hidden agenda to alter society and destroy the country that we all love. That's insane. Why would we want to do that?

Here in North Carolina back in the 60s a tobacco farmer died and willed his plantation to the county to be used as a park. In his will he said that "no coloreds" were allowed to use the park. When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1965 the Federal government ordered the county to either allow African Americans to use the park or to close the park. So the county closed the park.

One of the arguments against integrating the park was that if "coloreds" were allowed to use the park that they would destroy it. But eventually around 1967 the park opened back up and blacks were allowed to use the park along with whites.

Guess what happened. The blacks didn't destroy the park.

If we want equality, the most important thing we've got to do is to come out of our closets and let them see that we're not out to destroy America. We just want to enjoy it.

Rick

[Emproph]

I just read about that book on Joe’s site (joebrummer.com). It’s “Distortion technique #3 - Conspiracy Theory,” in the four part series “Six Roads of Deception,” Required reading and the best overview that I've seen as to how they mangle truth. It's referenced throughout much of that portion of the article.

FYI: “After the Ball” was written by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen. The book was inspired by an article Marshall Kirk wrote with Erastes Pill, but the link above erroneously continues to refer to Hunter Madsen (coauthor of the book), as Erastes Pill (coauthor of the article).

(Joe, if you see this please take note. )

{I did some googling, and the info in the “Deception” article is still all over the place exactly as described in the article.}

[keltic63]

You know, I was just surfing the web and decided to take a look around the Southern Baptist website. guess what I found? a reference to our "Agenda" reference to After the Ball It's not really a surprise but what a coincidence!

[awediot]

I'm not going to start crossing over quotes and forums, but the certainty on this guys part is a great reference point for us (me at least)...

Originally Posted by some joker on another site

Kirk & Madsen's writings are playbooks for the homosexual agenda. If you don't know that, such deep-seated denial is impenetrable, apart from God's intervention. I will waste no further time trying to explain it to you.

(He knows I'm gay btw)
I replied:

Originally Posted by yours truly

Now thats funny! I don't know my own playbook... I brought this up on a gay activist site and the book and authors were dismissed off handedly as irrelevant and dated. You might want to upgrade your paranoia before writing me off...We're coming to get ya in ever fresher ways!

I liked the excerpts from the book and the well laid out psychology of MIND CHANGE.

(and sorry, won't mix sites again)

[Rick336]

He says this book is the "playbook for the homosexual agenda?" That's nuts! The only time I've ever seen this book is on anti-gay websites. I frequently browse through the lesbian and gay book sections of both Borders Bookstore and Barnes and Noble and I don't recall ever seeing this book.

So, sixteen years ago two gay guys write a book on their particular perspective for achieving gay rights. So what? It doesn't mean that all of us follow it as the homosexual operator's manual to "destroy America."

If tens of thousands of our opponents actually believe this balonie, then maybe it explains why so many of them are paranoid about our intentions and why we're having such a tough time getting basic human rights.

Rick

[awediot]

Maybe we need to write one so they'll all know what we're talking about...
Maybe in TRACT form with lots of pictures!


schoolboi, what can I say, that queen cracks me up. I fear the Right-us, humorously challenged would miss the satire and spread the link around with a "see, see... I told you so." footnote.

[Zerbie]

Originally Posted by awediot

Maybe we need to write one so they'll all know what we're talking about...
Maybe in TRACT form with lots of pictures!


schoolboi, what can I say, that queen cracks me up. I fear the Right-us, humorously challenged would miss the satire and spread the link around with a "see, see... I told you so." footnote.

Already happened.

I can't remember whose stuff they used, but exactly that has happened. I was browsing around an atni-gay website not long ago and found some absolutely horrendous stuff quoted from some gay activist author. I shuddered at its horridness and wondered why anyone involved in gay rights would say such awful things. Some weeks later I came across the original quote in context, and it was a satire piece!!!! Whoever excerpted the quotes to put in on that anti-gay site HAD to have seen the entire thing and known it was satire, but wanted to mislead as many people as possible into believing that it was actually "the gay agenda."

Sorry I can't remember any specifics as to what it was/who was involved. Unfortunately, outrageous distortions are so familiar now, that I tend to forget specifics as they all melt into one morass of anti-gay ugliness floating through the fog of memory.

[Emproph]

(For the record, I ordered the book)

Originally Posted by awediot

I'm not going to start crossing over quotes and forums, but the certainty on this guys part is a great reference point for us (me at least)...

I had it out with a joker on another site too. She got it in her mind that BECAUSE it was published and meant to be out in the open, that this made the nefariousness of the "gay agenda" even more true.

That's one of the flaws with the characterization of this that I'd like to address if anyone is up for it.

But the other and bigger issue seems to be the way they mischaracterize this particular intent:

At least in the beginning, we are seeking public desensitization and nothing more. We do not need and cannot expect a full "appreciation" or "understanding" of homosexuality from the average American. You can forget about trying to persuade the masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if only you can get them to think that it is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won. And to get to shoulder-shrug stage, gays as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome and contrary. A large-scale media campaign will be required in order to change the image of gays in America.

And any campaign to accomplish this turnaround should do six things.

We'll get to those six things, but as far as I can tell, they are essentially common sense. So it seems that the worst sin of authors was that they were simply able to articulate the manipulation of the mechanics of human prejudice in the context of anti-gay homophobia in America.

If this is the case, Then this article and book is little more than an observation -- being touted as a conspiracy -- after the fact.

Anyone else?
__

The usage of Kirk and Madsen as evidence of a "gay agenda" was trotted out recently by the leaders of the ex-gay ministry Exodus.

Originally Posted by Alan Chambers, President of Exodus

September 25, 2007 Is There a Gay Agenda?

Originally Posted by Randy Thomas, Vice President of Exodus

What should be scary is that if you identify as gay and never heard of the above paper... why is it that all of it has basically been accomplished, and you not know it? Do you not know what those who claim to lead you are doing?

__
Now here are those six things. The "six things" that we are supposedly being "lead" to accomplish, that have "basically been accomplished," that "prove" that there is a giant gay conspiracy out to wrongly overhaul straight america.

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: the buck stops here

__
Actually, this might be the best refutation of all:

overhaul

o·ver·haul

1.

• a. To examine or go over carefully for needed repairs.
• b. To dismantle in order to make repairs.

[dsdrane]

...so where's my toaster-oven!?!?

[Emproph]

Originally Posted by Zerbie

I have noticed recently that all of a sudden (and that book is well over 15 years old!) it is being referenced by several right-wing types as The Authoritative Agenda that we are supposedly all following. That strikes me as incredibly funny, since I found it not a particularly striking book, and also I have a feeling most other LGBTs and allies are unaware of its existence.

They reference it because there is a chapter (near the end I believe) where the authors list their suggestions for how the national gay activist organizations should proceed, strategy-wise.

That speaks for itself, and the parts I bolded have been my experience since reading them last year.

Originally Posted by Rick336

I've seen this book referenced on many anti-gay web sites as THE book for the "HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA" as if all of us own a copy and follow every supposed suggestion on how to pull the wool over the eyes of America.

I've been active in gays rights for a long time and I've never heard of this book. And my guess is that 99% of the GLBT community hasn't either.

I haven't read the book so I can't make a judgement about it. But there's no reason for gay people to try to decieve America. To decieve them would mean that we've got some hidden agenda to alter society and destroy the country that we all love. That's insane. Why would we want to do that?

Here in North Carolina back in the 60s a tobacco farmer died and willed his plantation to the county to be used as a park. In his will he said that "no coloreds" were allowed to use the park. When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1965 the Federal government ordered the county to either allow African Americans to use the park or to close the park. So the county closed the park.

One of the arguments against integrating the park was that if "coloreds" were allowed to use the park that they would destroy it. But eventually around 1967 the park opened back up and blacks were allowed to use the park along with whites.

Guess what happened. The blacks didn't destroy the park.

If we want equality, the most important thing we've got to do is to come out of our closets and let them see that we're not out to destroy America. We just want to enjoy it.

Rick

I wanted to include Rick's comment because the simplicity of its truth really seems to bring forth the deception of the attempt to use Kirk and Madsen's suggestions as being in any sense conspiratorial.

We do have a real agenda to be understood and seen for who we are as human beings, as opposed to perverted sex freaks of nature.

In other words, we want EQUAL access to the park. And Kirk and Madsen's observations and suggestions are indeed an "agenda" to get EQUAL access to the park.

So in short, and in summation, it would seem that they (the anti-gays) are getting away with not only recognizing our true agenda as being motivated by equality, but also then equating – without connecting the dots – that agenda with an agenda to destroy civilization.

Is this just another example of Supremacists projecting their agenda onto an equality agenda?

If this is the case, then it needs to be called out.

[Emproph]

Originally Posted by u-dog

So.... "gay agenda" means...

Organizing and strategizing to bring about acceptance and justice for GLBT people?

Ok... so THERE IS a gay agenda! Guilty as charged.

This is supposed to be a conspiracy?

That perfect, I love it.

[paul]

Yeah, and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was part of the black agenda .

Speaking of agendas...I give you the fundamentalist Christian 'far right' agenda:

1. Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and often as possible.
2. Portray gays as aggressive challengers, not victims.
3. Denigrate homosexual protectors “just” cause.
4. Make gays look bad.
5. Make the victimizers look good.
6. Solicit funds: the buck stops here

[Vanessa White]

But not the way that our dissenters are describing it. As Rick's post so eloquently put it, and others as well, it is about equality and equal access. That is the biggest goal of our agenda. Nothing secretive or sinister about it. For me, the other part of the agenda that I am seeking to fulfill is proper, factual information; meaning, having these persons know that are so afraid of us, that we are not one eyed monsters looking to take over the world. We are people, just people living our lives, or at least wanting to, in a way that utilizes the freedoms that we are SUPPOSED to have as citizens of this nation and world.

I do agree, that to accuse us as having an agenda, is a way to detract from their own agenda. Or, maybe to achieve or fulfill that agenda more readily? I mean, by making us out as the enemy, as a group that wants to destroy all that is sacred and holy, it masks what they are really about- the power and control of it all, I believe. I guess what saddens me about it when I stop being angry about it, is that those that accuse us of this are the ones that are ethnocentric in their thinking, and we, as a community are generally trying to bridge that gap, and not trying to be the center of the universe, just a welcomed part of the universe.

This post has officially bummed me out. Why does it have to be viewed as so evil and wrong to want what we want???

[dsdrane]

Originally Posted by Vanessa White

I do agree, that to accuse us as having an agenda, is a way to detract from their own agenda. Or, maybe to achieve or fulfill that agenda more readily? I mean, by making us out as the enemy, as a group that wants to destroy all that is sacred and holy, it masks what they are really about- the power and control of it all, I believe. I guess what saddens me about it when I stop being angry about it, is that those that accuse us of this are the ones that are ethnocentric in their thinking, and we, as a community are generally trying to bridge that gap, and not trying to be the center of the universe, just a welcomed part of the universe.

This post has officially bummed me out. Why does it have to be viewed as so evil and wrong to want what we want???

What is one of the main -- and at times, to my mind, very problematic -- parts of being a Christian?

Evangelism.

They -- the Fundies -- see Evangelism in our "agenda" because that is what they themselves do. They are, in other words, projecting. This mistaken notion stems from the failure to understand that sexual orientation is something innate; you cannot be "recruited" into it.

The only choice involved is the choice to live openly as God created or to hide.

Christianity, on the other hand, is not something you're born into (though I'm sure some would argue with that) but is rather something you passively accept from your family's tradition or something you actively embrace as a mature person. Or not. Regardless, it's a choice.

Since, as we know from our Dear Leader, you're either for us or against us, so is it with the Fundies:

You're either batting for Christ or you're batting for Satan.

Hence their (utterly misguided) zeal.

It doesn't occur to them that you can be "batting for Christ" -- or otherwise spiritual -- AND gay or gay-friendly.

Hence the incredible importance of this site!

[Emproph]

The two words in bold are mine.

Originally Posted by paul

Yeah, and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was part of the black agenda .

Speaking of agendas...I give you the fundamentalist Christian 'far right' agenda:

1. Talk down about gays and gayness as loudly and often as possible.
2. Portray gays as aggressive challengers, not victims.
3. Denigrate homosexual protectors “just” cause.
4. Make gays look bad.
5. Make the victimizers look good.
6. Solicit funds: the buck starts here

Now that's some beauty I can work with.
__

Originally Posted by Vanessa White

This post has officially bummed me out. Why does it have to be viewed as so evil and wrong to want what we want???

Sorry. It sometimes helps when you don't take it personally. Not that I'm good at that, but like when you say:

I guess what saddens me about it when I stop being angry about it, is that those that accuse us of this are the ones that are ethnocentric in their thinking....

It's still a bummer, but the real issue is about the ideal of supremacy, and then mistaking that ideal for the ideal of unconditional love for all, or what should be understood as Christianity.

My point is that it shouldn't necessarily be knowledge of this thread that bums you out, but the very larger condition of our human nature that requires our need for ego gratification, for the sake of superiority.

Come to think of it Vanessa, I think you were better off just thinking the thread was a bummer...

[Emproph]

Originally Posted by dsdrane

It doesn't occur to them that you can be "batting for Christ" -- or otherwise spiritual -- AND gay or gay-friendly.

At that point all heretical "gay-friendly" Christians (liberal) are included in the definition of Christian in order to feign majority opinion.

[dsdrane]

...of those "Christians" who basically passively acquiesce to an either heart-felt or completely perfunctory baptism by their parents when they were infants.

'Cept for the Baptist, of course.

Anyhoo, as we all know, many of those either wander away from (or are actively repelled by) the Church, or never get beyond being C & Es.

So, they can argue 70% all they want, but they're full of dookie. (And they know it.)