It is not common practice to think of social movements in terms of marketing. Perhaps this is because using terms like "selling" or "marketing" seems to denigrate noble activities that usually portray themselves in terms of grass roots and the will of the people.79 However, the American Marketing Association defines marketing as "the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas , goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals."80
There are many variations of the definitions related to the theory of marketing but generically they all fall into one of four categories—the easy-to-remember 4-P's: product (conception), price, promotion (marketing communications), and place (distribution). Each is interrelated and each also has a persuasive function.81
The concept of product is formally defined in marketing to include all "functional, social , and psychological utilities and benefits."82 Ideas (as products) are defined as concepts, philosophies , images, or issues .83
Pricing of a product has several functions. Price is a pre-persuader. It positions the product versus the competitor. For example, "good" perfumes are expected to be more expensive; whereas, generic brands are expected to sell for less. When pricing is related to policy issues, it is often framed in terms of competing interests : the cost to the environment in drilling in pristine wilderness versus the cost to America of remaining dependent on unreliable foreign energy.
A new pricing concept called exaction pricing is introduced in this article. Rather than the mutually satisfying exchange relationships proposed in marketing theory, exaction pricing is defined as the economic or emotional price that is exacted from targeted groups for not buying the gay rights idea.
Promotion includes the different methods for getting the persuasive message to the target audience: advertising (paid persuasive messages), personal selling (which would include lobbying), publicity (working the media for positive coverage), and direct inducements.
Place is shorthand for the distribution channel (place) where consumers can buy the product.84
"Marketing communicators—as well as all persuaders (politicians, theologians, parents, teachers)—attempt to guide people toward the acceptance of some belief, attitude, or behavior by using reasoning or emotional appeals."85 And, if education is learning new ideas and information, then "every time we turn on the radio or television, every time we open a book magazine or newspaper, someone is trying to educate us."86 Therefore, marketing is rhetoric on steroids—the commercialized, technologized, and systematized application of persuasion, propaganda, or education (depending on who is doing the naming).
There are five broad forces that often are considered uncontrollable: social, economic, technological, regulatory and competitive.87 However, the gay rights movement seeks to change the social and regulatory, exploit the economic and technological, and silence or convert the competition. Therein lies the brilliance and power of their marketing campaign.
In this postmodern society "[t]ruth is not the issue. The issue is power. The new [social] model[ ] 'empower[s]' groups formerly excluded,"88 and "the power to control discourse is thus the master power."89 By 1990, half of all marriages from twenty years earlier had ended in divorce, and the traditional family, and its values, did not look so traditional anymore.90
The explosion of communications technology, including the advent of Internet, allowed the homosexual movement to exploit society's changing values. It enabled a disparate homosexual community representing "less than 3% (and perhaps less than 2%) of the population"91 to act as a cohesive group to project persuasive power into society.
In 1989 two strategies on how to totally repackage homosexual behavior as a rights issue were unveiled to the gay rights community.
[F]irst , you get your foot in the door, by being as similar as possible; then, and only then—when your one little difference [orientation] is finally accepted—can you start dragging in your other peculiarities , one by one. You hammer in the wedge narrow end first. As the saying goes, [a]llow the camel's nose beneath your tent, and his whole body will soon follow.92
Pederasts, gender-benders, sado-masochists, and other minorities in the homosexual community with more extreme "peculiarities" would keep a low profile until homosexuality is in the tent. Also, common homosexual practices such as anal-oral sex, anal sex, fisting, and anonymous sex—that is to say what homosexuals actually do and with how many they do it—must never be a topic.
Rather, only strongly favorable images of homosexuals should be displayed, even "paint[ing] gay men and lesbians as superior— veritable pillars of society.…Famous historical figures are especially useful…for two reasons: first, they are invariably dead…hence in no position to deny the truth…[and] high school history textbooks have already set them in incontrovertible cement."93
In other words, change the basic offer and do a marketing practitioner's job; only "provide positively valued information…that will increase the odds of [the consumer] ultimately choosing the marketer's offering over competitive options."94 Both ELM and Weaver would refer to this as associating the right symbols with your communication.
The second strategy was even more powerful.
[T]he public should be persuaded that gays are victims of circumstance , that they no more chose their sexual orientation than…their height… ([F]or all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay— even though sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence.) To suggest in public that homosexuality might be chosen is to open the can of worms labeled 'moral choice and sin' and give the religious right Intransigents a stick to beat us with.95
America takes pride in being a country where tolerance for others and individual freedom is held in high regard. It is both part of our laws and our culture. Today's homosexual marketer has properly recognized this environment and has aggressively followed these strategies in promoting the idea of "homosexuality" by directing the consumer away from the specifics of (especially male) homosexual behavior while also advertising that the choice to pursue such behavior is normal, innate, unchangeable, and prevalent. It is even healthy and desirable so it deserves protection as a right. What made such a campaign even thinkable was presaged more than fifteen years earlier.
In the early 1970s, homosexual activists unleashed a "violent and extortionary political campaign."96 Homosexual activists reasoned that if the influential American Psychiatric Association (APA) were to redefine homosexuality, other professional guilds (like the several times larger American Psychological Association) and then the rest would follow.97 When the APA leadership finally capitulated and agreed to allow the membership to consider the removal of homosexuality as a disorder, a mass mailing to 30,000 members by the pro-homosexual faction encouraged all members to agree to the change. With only one-third responding, the resolution was passed.98
"The acceptance of homosexuality by the American Psychological Association in 1973 was preceded by an unquestioning acceptance of [Dr. Alfred] Kinsey's work and under heavy political pressure by the nascent gay lobby, which recognized that to normalize homosexuality, they had to get it taken off the list of psychological disorders."99
Charles Socarides, a psychiatrist and reparative therapist who is an anathema to homosexual activists, recounted his perspective in The Journal of Human Sexuality on how the classification of homosexuality was changed in the early seventies:100
[Homosexual activists] targeted members of the worldly priesthood,101 the psychiatric community, and neutralized them with a radical redefinition of homosexuality itself.…[T]hey co-opted the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association and, through a series of political maneuvers,…[t]hey got the APA to say that same-sex sex was "not a disorder." It was merely "a condition"—as neutral as left-handedness.102
The much larger American Psychological Association followed suit two years later. As homosexuals predicted, over time other professional guilds from counseling to education to pediatrics accepted the lead of both APAs and de-diagnosed homosexuality as a disorder.103
What was not known at the time was that the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) played a central, though secretive, role both financially and strategically.104 The mailing by the pro-homosexual faction to the 30,000 APA members encouraging members to vote yes was apparently paid for by funds raised from a letter sent to NGTF's membership.65 Later it was also found that the Council on Research and Development of the APA did not actually investigate the issue thoroughly before it gave formal approval for deletion of homosexuality from the DSM and the Committee on Nomenclature had never formally approved the change.106
The de-classification was accomplished without the general membership ever knowing the machinations behind the scenes. This might explain why four years after the APA vote, the journal Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality reported that a survey it conducted showed 69% psychiatrists disagreed with the vote and still considered homosexuality a pathological adaptation.107
The sanitizing and repositioning of the product was not over. Few today remember that AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome) was still known in the medical community as late as 1981 as GRID (Gay-Related Immune Disorder) along with other unequivocally homosexual related conditions such as "Gay-Related Bowel Syndrome." As GRID spread and the threat to the homosexual community became apparent, homosexuals mobilized against the term. However, their "first priority remained to protect homosexuality itself as a perfectly acceptable, normal and safe way of life .…So the first move in the early eighties was to eliminate the earlier name… [P]ressure was swiftly generated to rename 'gay-related immune disorder' to AIDS: 'Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.'"108
The remake goes on. A recent term introduced into the message mix is "sexual minority."109 Homosexual activists now routinely name themselves as often and as publicly as possible as they wish to be defined. They strive to make the language used to describe them indicate that same-sex couples are "families" with the same values and child-rearing potential as heterosexuals. Paula Ettelbrick, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund proposes: "The norm in this society should be recognizing families in the way that they are self-defined."110 Just how far can repositioning of this idea go? Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, tells us: "[Homosexuals] hold sacred seeds.…[T]o be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or struggle around gender is literally a gift from God and we [homosexuals] have an enormous amount to teach this nation."111
As with much of the national persuasion campaign, very original applications of psychology and marketing theory have been used by homosexual activists. An extremely effective tool has been what is defined here as "exaction pricing."
When a marketer speaks of pricing, it is understood that he is referring to the price that is set for the product and therefore being asked of the consumer. One role price has in consumer decision making is in the positioning of the product against competitors (other ideas). So, from a marketing perspective, how does one set a price in the marketplace or, in this case, in the minds of an entire populace, that will encourage people to buy an idea rather than reject it?
People make buying decisions to satisfy both psychological and physical or utilitarian needs. First, it is useful to consider Pride and Ferrell's term "psychological pricing"112 which encourages "emotional rather than rational responses."113
Buying the homosexual idea, in place of one's own beliefs, family teachings, or those taught by Christianity and other faiths is a high price indeed, but gay rights marketers have found a way to exact that high price by their own version of emotional pricing. Exaction pricing is unsupported by facts, logic or proof. With the help of the media, they portray those who refuse to buy, and especially any who dare to publicly oppose (competitively react to), the gay rights idea as bigots, homophobes, heterosexists, ignorant, hateful, intolerant and so on. They position the accused in the same category as racists, sexists, elitists and other pejorative classes.
Accusations of "-cist" are used by militant gay rights advocates in this powerful pricing technique to exact an emotional price for refusing to accept the gay rights proposition. Wood and Pearce explain that a distinct characteristic of the "-cist" accusation is that it is almost impossible to refute.114 While it seems simple enough to be accused in this way, this type of label "in actuality, is an intricate form of argument" which, to defend against, requires a particularly sophisticated and, hence, both rare and precarious form of argument.115 Ergo, all those gay rights opponents who do not have the capacity to counter the accusation, even if they feel it is untrue, pay the emotional price both internally and externally of being branded an "-cist." To regain the prestige of not being an "-cist" (and ultimately Festinger suggests an individual will) the even higher price of moderating one's personal beliefs is exacted.
Remember that people want to hold right opinions, beliefs, and attitudes. A conflict arises between their own beliefs and a continuous flood, a shower, of homosexual-positive messages that cannot be turned off. The emotional price (the exaction price) is an uncomfortable mental state of perpetual cognitive dissonance through forced compliance. By comparison, the idea of accepting homosexuality is presented as a prestige product, only for those who, by inference, do not want to be seen as any of the above "-cists"-type negative personalities.
The favorite exaction-pricing weapon is to accuse anyone who publicly expresses competing ideas of being a homophobe. Its complexity is particularly effective; by definition it includes unnatural fear plus all the mechanisms of an "-cist" label. The exaction power of the tactic is even more powerful as it is often coupled with the idea that most homophobes use anti-homosexual attitudes as a smokescreen to disguise their own homosexual feelings.116
The economic pricing of the homosexual idea takes the carrot and stick approach.117 Since homosexuals are “twice as likely as the general population to have a household income between $60,000 and $250,000,” one of the obviously powerful tools the homosexual community has is the economic empowerment of where to spend money.118
Pertman reports that the recognition of this market is obvious. From 1997 to 1999, advertising in homosexual publications soared 20.2% to $120.4 million.119 Now such corporate mainstays as John Hancock Financial Services, Fleet, American Express, Levi-Strauss, Alamo Rent-a-Car, MTV, and General Motors consider sexual orientation when creating target marketing groups.120 And, the homosexual marketer knows, social prejudice is eroded by mainstream advertising aimed at homosexuals.121
Of course, as homosexuals have dollar-power, they also have the power to boycott companies who do not toe the party line. The homosexual community is not bashful about exacting a price when it comes to well-publicized boycotts. Sometimes described as a minefield, even corporate giants have had to compromise and come around to the activists' demands.
One dramatic example of the use of the stick is an incident involving Coors. "Still suffering from a boycott that began in 1977 over alleged mistreatment of homosexual employees, Coors managers are visiting bars to get the word out that Coors wants their business and is the only major brewer offering domestic-partner benefits."122 This is a picture-perfect example of total conversion accomplished via exaction pricing.
An even more dramatic situation involved United Airlines. The homosexual-dominated City of San Francisco passed an Equal Benefits Ordinance heralded as a landmark anti-discrimination bill.123 It required all businesses who contracted with the city to offer the same benefits to same-sex partners as offered to married couples.124
When United balked, a nationwide boycott including advertising campaigns was instigated by supporters of the bill. The boycott targeted first the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets. The advertisements were a left-right combination punch. First, the advertisements linked United to Pat Robertson, characterizing him as a homosexual discriminator and religious extremist. Second, the activists promoted American Airlines, who had made significant donations to various national homosexual advocacy groups, as the gay-friendliest airline.125
This was a powerful emotional and economic version of exaction pricing backed by a homosexual market estimated to spend "$54.1 billion in annual consumer spending in the U.S. travel industry" or almost 10% of the national total.126 The strategy got the intended results.
How could a movement ever penetrate a market that consists of the hearts and heads of an entire society? The key was to consider first and foremost the media in everything the homosexual movement did—to control information and images. Only by controlling information could they saturate important centers of influence and thus avoid or beat other ideas in the market.
As Jowett and O'Donnell explain, control of information is essential.127 Control ruses take the form of "withholding information, releasing information at predetermined times, [or] in juxtaposition with other information that may influence public perception, manufacturing information,…distorting information," and communicating key information to or through selective audiences.128 The objective is "(a) control[ ] the media as a source of information…and (b) present[ ] distorted information from what appears to be a credible source" and (c) conceal the true purpose.129
Altheide and Johnson are cited for a critical control concept they label as "bureaucratic propaganda."130 In this form of persuasive communication, information that appears to be scientifically gathered and objective is disseminated to influential groups with the purpose of maintaining the legitimacy of the propagandizing organization. Although the information is often contrived, distorted, or falsely interpreted, the information may never be seen by the public. Rather, some congressional committees or citizen's groups use it for actions or programs.131 The groups used by homosexual activists to distribute the homosexual idea and gay rights issues were those that touched the most Americans and had the highest source credibility. Just like the tremendous leverage they achieved by co-opting the mental health professions, who would then become disseminators of the homosexual agenda through actions and programs, it was planned that the media, the government, educators and liberal, "less fervent" churches would be forced on board. Each of these "channels" carries its own authority and credibility.
Just as importantly, it is hard to imagine that anyone can escape the influence of more than one or two of these institutions. The homosexual idea would be available for purchase to everyone through their local distributor.
Jay Conrad Levinson, a former vice-president and creative director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising and Leo Burnett Advertising, says, "A theme is a set of words that summarizes your identity.…The best themes are those that can be utilized for decades. The longer you use them, the more powerful they become.…If you have one, lean on it. You'll find it to be a potent weapon."132
This potent weapon was recognized in the formulation of the gay rights campaign when it was strategized that the gay "campaign should not demand explicit support for homosexual practices, but should instead take antidiscrimination as its theme."133 That would "[g]ive potential protectors a just cause.…Make gays look good.…Make victimizers look bad."134 In fact, that would make the very expression of anti-homosexuality beliefs so socially unacceptable that even the most intransigent opposition would ultimately be silenced in public.135
If one just reviews some of the prominent national voices in the movement, it is not difficult to ascertain this recurring gay rights theme.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), based in Washington, D.C., is the largest national homosexual lobby in the nation. Claiming 400,000 members, HRC and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation report income136 over $16 million. Their activity descriptions are P340 and D050, to propose, support or oppose legislation and the defense of human or civil rights, respectively.137 Their web site explains that HRC is a vigilant bipartisan "watch dog" dedicated to educate Congress.138 Some issues that they take on include: advocating for hate crime legislation, fighting HIV/AIDS, protecting our [homosexual] families, and working for better lesbian health.139 Along with lobbying, intense training of future GLBT political activists is part of the mission.140
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is the dominant media relations and watchdog lobby of the homosexual movement with income of $4,199,134.141 The GLAAD website proudly recounts that "[i]n 1992, Entertainment Weekly named GLAAD as one of Hollywood's most powerful entities and the Los Angeles Times described the group as possibly the most successful organizations lobbying the media ."142 One illustration is that GLAAD takes credit for getting the New York Times to change their editorial policy in 1987 to use the word gay.143
GLAAD claims that it has not only reached industry insiders, but has also influenced millions through newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, television and visibility campaigns.144 Training homosexual organizations how to deal with the media is GLAAD's mission.145 It supports positive portrayals of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender146 (GLBT) issues or images in a the media but attacks any negative press. They are particularly proud of their campaign to derail Dr. Laura Schlessinger's move to television.147
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF, previously the same NGTF involved in the APA effort) reports income in excess of $3.5 million.148 Whereas HRC has an emphasis in national government and GLAAD in media, NGTLF's additional focus is also at the community level. The organization's website describes the organization's work this way: "We're proud of our commitment to the linkages between oppressions based on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.…NGLTF is waging a campaign against anti-GLBT hate crimes, which will focus on coalition-building and legislative work in key states…[and ending] institutionalized homophobia149
Key strategies include public education , grass roots training for activist skills, monitoring and reporting on legislation and building coalitions for advocacy.150
"To discover what a thing is 'called' according to some system is the essential step in knowing, and to say that all education is learning to name rightly…would assert an underlying truth."151 Lesbian author Patricia Nell Warren put it much more succinctly: "Whoever captures the kids owns the future."152
Two highly effective organizations who specialize in the K-12 education channel of influence are Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
PFLAG, with income of just under $1.5 million,153 claims membership of over 76,000 with 425 local groups. PFLAG promotes the idea that ignorance of homosexuality has bred a climate of torment, fear and hatred in our schools. They allege that the average high school student hears twenty-five anti-homosexual slurs daily154 and that homosexual youth may account for 30% of all teen suicides.155 Through "support," they implore an adverse society, an ill-informed public , to help create a more healthy and respectful society.156
GLSEN, with income exceeding $1.8 million157 states that their mission is to fight the homophobia and heterosexism that undermine healthy school climates.158 They work to educate teachers, students and the public at large on how these issues have similar adverse impacts as racism and sexism.159 They educate the educators on how to stop discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and to help GLBT teachers and students fight for their rights.160 Their resources include such training as Homophobia 101 and 102.161 The organization asserts that they have trained 400 school staffs around the country and that the first statewide Safe School for Gay and Lesbian Students sponsored by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a result of and modeled closely on their work.162
The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund reports income over $10,000,000163 and is the homosexual-specific equivalent of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU is also very active in gay rights and reports income of over $25 million.164
Hate speech and hate crime, homophobia and heterosexism, oppression versus tolerance, diversity versus discrimination, ignorance versus education, fear versus safety—all of the old and new "cists" and "cisms"—are the thematic vernacular found in all homosexual persuasive communication. Homosexuals are innocent victims. Dissent, even by homosexuals, is always due to ignorance, bigotry, or some variant of homophobia.
If NGLTF is taking credit for linkages of sexual orientation to accepted discrimination categories, then it follows that NGLTF created linkages where none previously existed. GLAAD is proud of its public ranking as being the most powerful (a la Foucault "controlling discourses") in influencing media.165 HRC works to insure safety, openness, and equality. By inference, the opposite must exist and need fixing.166
Just as the sales professional is only there to help, HRC, GLAAD, NGLFT, PFLAG, and GLSEN are there to help educate everyone else, thereby helping to protect homosexuals from all the ignorant "cists" who are intolerant and victimizers.167 It is never called advertising, lobbying, public relations, or—heaven forbid—spin. It is always about a need for more education.
Next Page: Gay Rights Marketing: The Agenda at Work
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