Interest Groups (aka Let's Talk About What We Want By Not Talking About What We Want)

Hey. Hi. Howdy. Hello. I don't know how to start off blog posts, so I'm just gonna keep doing this.

If you haven't read the title of the blog post, I'm gonna be talking about interest groups, particularly those that are related to LGBT issues. For some context, the issue around gay marriage has been pretty black-and-white. Liberals support gay-marriage and LGBT rights, while conservatives oppose it. The interest groups that I chose, Lambda Legal and the American Family Association, accurately reflect these beliefs, and wow. Wow Wow Wow™. That was quite a ride.

First off, let me tell you a little bit about each group. Lambda Legal takes a liberal stance on LGBT issues, and clearly states their purpose in the "About Us" page. Their mission is to "achieve full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and everyone living with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work." The rest of the pages on their website further describe this goal, and establish them as an inclusive organization that reaches out to Latinos, non-English speakers, low-income communities, and people of all age groups.

Contrastingly, the AFA has an extremely conservative viewpoint on gay marriage. However, their purpose isn't as clear as Lambda Legal's. Their mission is to “inform, equip, and activate individuals to strengthen the moral foundations of American culture, and give aid to the church here and abroad in its task of fulfilling the Great Commission.” As you can see, they claim to be very patriotic and religious, but they don´t explicitly link that to current social issues.

I read further into their purpose, and I found an agenda that they created to succeed in their goal of...yeah I don't know. Their agenda is as follows:

1. Restrain evil by exposing the works of darkness.
2. Promote virtue by upholding in culture that which is right, true and good according to Scripture.
3. Convince individuals of sin and challenge them to seek Christ’s grace and forgiveness.
4. Motivate people to take a stand on cultural and moral issues at the local, state and national levels. 
5. Encourage Christians to bear witness to the love of Jesus Christ as they live their lives before the world.

Again, very ambiguous. They certainly use a lot of loaded language like "darkness", "virtue", "true", etc. but they never identify the "evil" that they're battling.

Anyway, here are two videos from each interest group that (attempt to) summarize their purpose: Lambda Legal and AFA.

So after watching these, I noticed that their biases are very prominent (as you would expect from interest groups): Lambda Legal supports LGBT rights, whereas the AFA is strongly bound to Christian beliefs. Neither of them address the other side of the argument very well which is also expected, but... AFA, honey, you could have at least tried to address your own argument.

It seems that they were just skirting around the topic the entire time. I mean, Lambda Legal jumped straight into the topic. They showed headlines of victories for gay marriage, showcased LGBT advocates, and identified anti-LGBT politicians and policies as their enemy. They even highlighted this divide by coloring the advocates in pink and the opponents in blue. Pretty straightforward, right?

But the AFA video was just a jumble of historical events. I understand that they're trying to show that America is constantly changing, but how do they feel about these moments? If you showed me a video reel that showcases MLK, slinkies, gay marriage, and weed and you said "I am against some of these things", then I kinda wanna know which ones you oppose. (We can all probably agree that slinkies are the worst ones of the bunch, though. They're such a stupid toy.) But again, instead of explaining things, they further emphasized their love for God in an ever-changing society.

It's like if you asked someone a question, and their Christianity just intensified. I don't understand what you're trying to tell me?? That's kinda vague and confusing? Please tell me what your actual stance is??

I'm just ?? 

If you look at the articles though, you'll see that they encompass a number of beliefs. They're not fond of transgenders freely using bathrooms that they're comfortable in, they strongly oppose abortion, and they're not very critical of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. So you could get an idea of their political stances after reading their articles, but personally, I would prefer it if they explicitly stated some of these points in their videos and "Our Mission" page.

In conclusion, these interest groups play a very important role in determining someone's political ideology. They're both extremely passionate about their beliefs and barely address the other side. This lack of comprehensiveness combined with loaded language and strong emotional appeals could easily persuade someone who isn't very informed on the topic. So yeah. That's it, buddies.

Thanks for reading this long post. K. Thanks. Bye.