Through whatever improbable set of circumstances you care to postulate, you wake up tomorrow morning consuming with a seething hatred for all things homosexual. It’s not strong enough for you to go out and start offing people, but it is strong enough for you to believe passionately that your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor are all best spent opposing SSM.
Fortunately for you, but unfortunately for the rest of us, the same contrivance that had turned you into a more intelligent Fred Phelps has also resulted in your having a fortune the size of Bill Gates, Queen Elizabeth’s, and Lex Luthor’s put together.
How do you go about opposing the growing legalization of gay marriage?
Create a large scale terrorist campaign, using left wing fanatics as my tools. The higher ups would be my people, but the people who do the actual killing would be left wing lunatics of various sorts who are under the impression they are fighting for their side. Spread the rumor on blogs, Internet forums and such that that is exactly what is happening, with shills on the other side denouncing it as a conspiracy theory; this makes admitting what is happening socially unacceptable.
That would let me get my right wing fanatics into power and instigate sweeping rollbacks of civil rights, including the push for SSM.
I’d also finance a federal lawsuit demanding Equal Protection and Due Process protection for triad marriages, with a couple of well-meaning but clueless shill triad groups suing for marriage recognition. And I’d bankroll huge media exposure for the effort, tying it, semi-overtly, to the push for same-sex marriage.
Yes, this. Reinforce the idea that gayness is all about promiscuity, anonymous sex in public restrooms, wearing leather (or flannel), and rebellious attention-whoring (as opposed to heterosexuality, which is all about love, commitment, and traditional family values).
Innocuously release a study noticing higher prevalence of homosexuality in the local areas surrounding gay couples. Subtly suggest causation while fixing popcorn.
Instead of trying to rile up anger among straight people, I would try to promote apathy among gay people.
My “Marriage: What’s the Big Deal, Really?” ad campaign would feature testimonials from bitter divorced people (maybe using both gays and straights) pointing out how a marriage can screw up your life. I would find some gay people who didn’t believe in marriage in the first place (I’m sure some of them exist - and if I couldn’t find them, I’d hire actors who were willing to go to great lengths to pretend to be gay). I’d get them to talk about how anti-gay it is to want to just assimilate into heterosexual culture instead of staying separate and celebrating a unique gay way of life. Maybe an ad would show a cheerful montage of some happy singles talking about how enjoyable a life of independence can be, and how gay people are better off without the pressure to settle down into a bland suburban life.
Maybe I’d do an awareness campaign about the countries that still execute people for being gay and other kinds of messed up shit like that in order to point out, “Hey, instead of making such a fuss about getting married we should focus on helping out these people who are in serious danger”.
I’m sure I could hire some advertising whiz who could make it all very persuasive.
Buy politicians. With the kind of money you’re talking about, it doesn’t really matter what the public thinks. If you can sink or float any politician at your whim, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff.
As a gay man I could say the easiest way to torpedo it would be to render the AIDS drugs as worthless. Then gays would go back to concentrating on getting rid of HIV and not anything else.
I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to divulge that information as it doesn’t require a great deal of financial backing and some unscrupulous reader would either implement it or forward it to someone that would.
if you don’t mind me asking why this question? Do you really want to torpedo this issue or are trying to figure out what to do with each scenario to make sure that gay marriage survives?
I’ve never understood anyone’s opposition to this issue. Straight female here. but i really don’t understand why anyone would oppose gay marriage. how does it harm anyone else? but maybe i’m hijacking this thread and i don’t mean to.
That didn’t work back in the 80s, before there were any drugs. Even keeping busy with GMHC, ACT-UP, protests, and taking care of our friends and lovers . . . we still had time to have fun.
I’ve gotta say “pro-gay” terrorism as my first choice, too. Get some media-unsympathetic catspaws lined up with bathtub Sarin (hey, Aum Shinrikyo did it), maybe suicide bombers with full-blown AIDS (a variant of an urban legend that was goin’ around, awhile back—technically, I’d just need to get a couple of stooges to get caught getting ready to do this, and the panic would spread like wildfire as well as actual attacks would).
Failing outright murder and “asymmetric warfare,” I might use my fortune and media connections (I could probably buy some) to uncover and sensationalize some horrific abuse case(s) involving children in a gay family (look, just considering the sheer numbers involved, I’m sure you can dig up at least a couple of cases of this happening). Take a few pages from the Hearst/Barnum* playbook, and voila…“Gay Mommy Dearest” (or worse) abusing the childreeen and defiling our maidens™ is the first thing people think of when the idea of gay marriage being normalized.
*One of my ancestors (well, a great[sup]+[/sup] aunt, anyway. I’m not a direct descendant) was the fat lady in Barnum’s circus at one point. It’s practically in my blood.
