There’s a new CNN report out now: Human Rights Campaign declares a national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people. They’re not just victims now. They’re more at risk now than at any time in history!

How gullible do they think we are? They’ve got “Pride” logos popping up on half the ads you see each day? But gay activists have played the “victim” card non-stop for decades, and they’re not about to stop now.

Two of their movement’s most influential strategists prescribed doing just that, in a Machiavellian propaganda piece more than 45 years ago. You’ll find it under the “Vilification of Victimizers” heading in “The Overhauling of Straight America.” This article, published in 1987, was later expanded into the same authors’ After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 1990s.

This wasn’t some fringe scheme scribbled on some napkin at a gay bar. It was a disturbingly brilliant strategy document that gathered and focused gay leaders’ thoughts into a clear plan, and set the direction for the movement that’s upended everything.

Coldly Crafted Victimhood and Slander

And right from the start, it called for manipulating us all with “victim” language, which rips off and twists Christian sentiments. From the “Overhauling” article:

[2] PORTRAY GAYS AS VICTIMS, NOT AS AGGRESSIVE CHALLENGERS.
 … to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector. … A media campaign to promote the Gay Victim image should make use of symbols which reduce the mainstream’s sense of threat, which lower its guard, and which enhance the plausibility of victimization.

…

[5] MAKE THE VICTIMIZERS LOOK BAD.

Remaining opponents … must be vilified. … The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose secondary traits and beliefs disgust middle America. These images might include: the Ku Klux Klan demanding that gays be burned alive or castrated; bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking coolly about the “fags” they have killed or would like to kill; a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.

Granted, there was a time when gays could claim they were “oppressed.” This version, though? It was a grotesque distortion of the reality at the time, coldly calculated to play on hearers’ care for victims. It worked, too.

The National Hissy-Fit

The crazy thing is, they’re still working it. They’ve gotten just about everything they’ve wanted, socially, politically, and legally. So how do you play the victim after all that? You double down on it. “National State of Emergency!”

I’d call it more like  “National State of Hissy-Fit.” CNN quotes HRC president Kelly Robbins:

In many cases [ multiplying threats] are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.

At risk of what? How many are losing their jobs over pronoun choices? Or being doxxed? How many trans athletes are losing match after match to non-trans athletes? The level of control this insurgency has gained over us is unbelievable.

They’re in emergency status? Tell that to the moms targeted by the FBI for speaking up at school board meetings.

The Legal Threat: Anti-Letting-Gays-Control-Absolutely-Everything Legislation

HRC says there’s been an “unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation” this year. In other words, some Christians have been pushing back. (Imagine that.)

FiveThirtyEight has details. Check it out, and you’ll see the big increase is in “school restrictions.” Such as, for example, no unrestricted access for drag queens. Sex-drenched books removed from children’s libraries. Teachers not being allowed to hide lesson plans from parents. Young men with beards booted from young women’s locker rooms. No teaching age-inappropriate sexual material — which is what Florida’s misnamed “Don’t say gay” bill is really about. 

This isn’t “anti-LGBTQ+” legislation. Not unless you think that’s the right label for laws that stand in the way of their stampeding, crushing race to control every square foot of American culture. And grab control of our children.

Oh, it’s an emergency, all right — the kind of crisis would-be totalitarians face when they run into barriers against owning all, controlling all. It’s the panic that comes from realizing they might never get their whole foot-stomping, tantrum-throwing, power-abusing way, the way they want it, in every detail, and in every little child’s life.

Rising Violence? Puh-lease!

What about anti-gay violence, though? CNN almost makes it sound like a huge rising risk:

Violence against LGBTQ people continues and the community’s rights have become a flashpoint in the 2024 election. Years after 49 people were killed at the Pulse gay nightclub in Florida, Club Q in Colorado in November became the site of a massacre at a beloved LGBTQ “safe space.”

Read that paragraph really, really really fast, and it might work. It might feel as if violence were escalating like crazy. Try it again slower, and you’ll notice two key words: “Years after.” That should tell you something. As in, “This doesn’t happen so often after all, does it?”

Against Gays? Are You Sure?

And remember: The Pulse nightclub killer wasn’t some average American targeting gays. He was a heavy-drinking radical Islamist devoted to ISIS, who told police the attack was his revenge for U.S. military action in Iraq.

As for the Club Q crime? The defendant’s attorney tells us the man “identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.” So how does he represent conservative Christians again?

Granted, the prosecution disagrees. It’s their job to disagree. But even if they’re right (we’ll see when it comes to trial), single incidents do not signal nationwide emergencies. Not unless you work in the media, and you have a narrative to sell.

They Call It “Erased.” How About We Just Call It “Accountable”?

CNN closes this display of hysteria by crowing on the HRC’s behalf, “LGBTQ+ people nationwide will not be erased – not now, not ever.” Oh, how I wish I’d had that quote in hand a few days ago, when I wrote a column about being “erased.”

I don’t want any individual erased, not in the slightest. God loves all, and He calls me to love all. Nevertheless, I’d be just fine seeing certain organizations vanish, and all their deceptions going up in a puff of vapor. Erase that all you want, and more power to you!

In sum: The gay power clique is seeing its decades-long victim schtick losing impact, and it’s descended into a nationwide hissy-fit. But Christian, you need not be cowed by the bawling or  by the toys they’re throwing. You stand on firm ground. You can even smile here. You’re in the Lord’s hands. Let Him give you the hope you need, based on the truth He supplies.

There’s no need to scream false emergencies, no need to throw tantrums. But we also don’t need to contribute a thing to anyone else’s false emergencies. And that means we can’t let their false “victim” charade go on without calling them to account for it.

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream and the author or editor of six books, including the highly acclaimed Too Good To Be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality.