This was 38 years ago, when the AIDS epidemic was sparking anger and fear in ‘straight America’. “Quiet backroom liaisons” between gays, broadcast companies and newsrooms were acknowledged as the reason gays were coming out of the closet on television and in films.

The article begins by stating: “The first order of business is desensitisation of the American public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitise the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion. Ideally, we would have straights register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games: She likes strawberry and I like vanilla; he follows baseball and I follow football. No big deal.”

Faced with general public opposition the authors had little expectation of immediately persuading the masses that homosexuality is a good thing. They opined: “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 the 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.”

Kirk and Pill outlined a six-pronged strategy to desensitise America. I believe we this strategy has been and is being used to desensitise Jamaica today.

Step one was to “…talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible”. They continued: “The way to benumb raw sensitivities about homosexuality is to have a lot of people talk a great deal about the subject in a neutral or supportive way. Open and frank talk makes the subject seem less furtive, alien, and sinful, more above board. Constant talk builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the subject, and that a sizable segment accepts or even practises homosexuality. Even rancorous debates between opponents and defenders serve the purpose of desensitisation so long as “respectable” gays are front and centre to make their own pitch. The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome”.

The conversation in Jamaica grew noticeably louder after the University of the West Indies terminated Professor Brendan Bain’s employment as head of the Caribbean HIV Regional Training Network in 2014. The man and woman on the street felt things had gone too far. Massive public rallies in Half-Way-Tree in 2014 and 2015, in defence of traditional family, faith and religious freedom, confirmed the correctness of opinion polls that Jamaicans are far away from accepting the practice of homosexuality. However, for the astute, it is clear that lines have been drawn in the media sand and furtive efforts are being made behind the scenes to dismantle institutional opposition to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) agenda. While the talk is not entirely open and frank, there are identifiable voices who have made it their mission to talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible.

While the talk was developing, Kirk and Pill cautioned against shocking and repelling the masses by premature exposure to homosexual behaviour in the early stages of the campaign. “Instead, the imagery of sex should be downplayed, and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social question as much as possible. First, let the camel get his nose inside the tent; only later his unsightly derriere!”

The two strategists understood the importance of the visual media, film and television as “the most powerful image-makers in Western civilisation”. They calculated that the average American household watched over seven hours of TV daily. Those hours, they said, “open up a gateway into the private world of straights through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far as desensitisation is concerned, the medium is the message — of normalcy. So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert weapon in the battle to desensitise the mainstream. Bit by bit over the past 10 years, gay characters and gay themes have been introduced into TV programmes and films (though often this has been done to achieve comedic and ridiculous affects)”.

War had to be waged against religion. For Kirk and Pill, “While public opinion is one primary source of mainstream values, religious authority is the other. When conservative churches condemn gays, there are only two things we can do to confound the homophobia of true believers. First, we can use talk to muddy the moral waters. This means publicising support for gays by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own about conservative interpretations of biblical teachings, and exposing hatred and inconsistency. Second, we can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional religion one must set the mightier draw of science & public opinion (the shield and sword of that accursed “secular humanism”). Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before on such topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can work again here.”

There are those who question whether there is an “LGBT agenda” that is, whether forces are being directed by an unseen hand to affect the course of social and political developments. At the very least, Kirk and Pill give us cause to think in the face of obvious attacks against religion and the church in the Jamaican media and elsewhere.

The second step was to portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers. Kirk and Pill crafted a media campaign to promote the gay victim image using symbols to “enhance the plausibility of victimisation…sympathetic figures of nice young people, old people, and attractive women were to be featured”. Again, a caution, “It almost goes without saying that groups on the farthest margin of acceptability such as NAMBLA (that is the North American Man-Boy Love Association) “must play no part at all in such a campaign: suspected child molesters will never look like victims”.

Steps three is titled ‘Give protectors a just cause’. Gays were to be cast in media campaigns as society’s victims so that straights would be encouraged to be their protectors.

Step four was to ‘Make gays look good’. Gay victims were to be portrayed as ever yman; not the harbinger of disease at a time when homosexuals were being blamed for the HIV pandemic.

Step five was sinister. That was to make the “victimisers” look bad. “To be blunt”, said Kirk and Pill, “they must be vilified”. Professor Bain appears to have been cast by the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coaltion (CVCC) as a victimiser. He gave evidence in a Belizean court case challenging the constitutionality of the buggery laws in that country. He stated, among other things, that men who have sex with men have a higher incidence of HIV infection than other groups. This was an inconvenient truth. Professor Bain’s separation from his job at the University of the West Indies at the instigation of the CVCC was painful, not just for him but for hundreds of thousands of people across the Caribbean who had been positively impacted by the selflessness of his life’s work. His job at the CHART Network was to train workers in the health sector to care for people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. This had resulted in reduced stigma, greater access to health services and improved quality and value of lives.

Finally, step six was to raise unprecedented expenditures for months or even years for what would be a massive campaign. Human rights is now a sexy topic attracting billions of dollars in international donor financing. The ability of civil society and non-governmental organisations to access that money is often linked to their willingness to do LGBT advocacy.

Nearly two generations later, Kirk and Pill are acknowledged as important to the success of the LGBT rights movement. They determined that they would not, once again, retreat and become untouchables. Their strategy forged alliances with media, politics, finance and factions of the church. It is a strategy being exported to Jamaica covertly and expressly by the United States whose secretary of state, John Kerry, this year described LGBT rights as the heart and conscience of his country’s diplomacy.

Send comments to the Observer or ColeyNich@gmail.com