"He Gets Us": Stealth Homophobia and the Dallas Morning News. Update: This article big success on Reddit. Update.
The homophobic forces behind the "He Gets Us" campaign and how the Dallas Morning News aided and abetted it by covering it up.
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Update: 2024
A good article on the “He Gets Us” campaign showing the homophobes behind it.
Stealth Homophobia aided and abetted by the Dallas Morning News
The deadliest danger for Gays isn’t those churches were are upfront in their hatred of Gays like Stedfast, but those whose homophobia is stealth. For those churches lure in unsuspecting Gays and at a point when the Gay person identifies with the church go in for the kill of their Gayness.
The following is a link to a recent an article that the Dallas Morning News posted. It is titled, “Americans respect Jesus, but not his followers.” June 24, 2023.
It is by Josh McQueen who is the research director of McQueen Analytics, “the research partner for the He Gets Us campaign.”
The issue as Josh McQueen explains it, is that Christianity is in steep decline. So, there was a study done for the He Get Us campaign.
A national study and ongoing research tracking efforts related to the He Gets Us campaign challenges the correlation between religious identity and spiritual openness.
This is the link to the “He Gets Us,” website.
The Internet Archive first discovered and archived it 12/1/2021.
There is also a Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/HeGetsUs
McQueen tries to make the issue of declining Christianity as one of poor marketing. From the article:
“Today, identifying as Christian no longer carries the same “cultural capital” it once did. Many people see the failings of churches, denominations and pastors as a reflection of Jesus with which they do not want to associate.”
The whole article is about “branding” and that “Jesus is the brand.” This is the recommendation of McQueen:
“Of course, Christians and churches still have a lot of work to do. They can demonstrate that Jesus gets us by warmly welcoming and supporting spiritually open people and offering resources for those dealing with struggles like poverty, loneliness, anxiety, addictions and mental health challenges.”
Nowhere does McQueen discuss that maybe the beliefs of Evangelical Christians have alienated people, in particular the never-ending attacks on the LGBT.
SO, WHAT IS THE REALITY BEHIND ALL THIS.
Looking at the He Gets Us website.
I went to the website and searched for “Gay.” I got the same article when I searched for “Lesbian,” “LGBT,” “LGBTQ,” “homosexuality,” “sexuality,”
However, looking at the article itself there isn’t the word “Gay” in it, nor the words, “Lesbian,” “LGBT,” “LGBTQ,” or “homosexuality.”
https://hegetsus.com/en/he-gets-us-has-an-agenda
The reason that the search engine finds this page with the terms mentioned is that though the words aren’t in the text, they are the tags used for the webpage.
What the article is about, is how being hostile and angry about things that Christians don’t like, is not good for the branding of Christianity. From the article.
— how did this man’s story become associated with hatred and oppression for so many people? And how might we all rediscover the promise of the love his story represents?
What the article is pushing is a “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” type tactic, but in not those words. “Sexuality” appears once in this text.
And this is what we’ve learned: From politics to sexuality and religion, so many of us feel like our values, beliefs, and identities are under attack by the ideological “others” around us.
The idea of the article is that Christians need to calm down because that doesn’t promote “brand” Jesus.
I searched with the terms, “homosexual,” “sodomy,” “sodomite,” and didn’t find anything.
Investigative Reporting on He Gets Us.
The Internet Archive showed me that it was the Servant Foundation behind this.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220531234646/http://hegetsus.com/
It is also on their current (6/30/2023) page.
https://hegetsus.com/en/about-us
This article however points out that it is funded by the Servant Christian Foundation.
Note: There is a foundation with the same name but it isn’t the Servant Foundation.
The above article is very informative about what the goals are, who is funding it, and the methods being used. It is totally uninformative that it is anti-Gay.
This following article does tell us what is really behind all of this happy marketing.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/us/he-gets-us-super-bowl-commercials-cec/index.html [Feb. 13, 2023]
Turns out that the groups behind this campaign are anti-LGBT groups. From the article.
The campaign has connections to anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws
The chain of influence behind “He Gets Us” can be followed through public records and information on the campaign’s own site. The campaign is a subsidiary of The Servant Foundation, also known as the Signatry.
According to research compiled by Jacobin, a left-leaning news outlet, The Servant Foundation has donated tens of millions to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group. The ADF has been involved in several legislative pushes to curtail LGBTQ rights and quash non-discrimination legislation in the Supreme Court.
Persons who get engaged with this campaign are funneled to Evangelical churches.
As CNN explains, not accessible from the main page, is a statement of beliefs.
https://hegetsuspartners.com/about
Weirdly this webpage has some of the text semi-grayed out and I had to copy and past it into Microsoft Word to read it.
Our Beliefs
He Gets Us has chosen to not have our own separate statement of beliefs. Each participating church/ministry will typically have its own language. Meanwhile, we generally recognize the Lausanne Covenant as reflective of the spirit and intent of this movement and churches that partner with explorers from He Gets Us affirm the Lausanne Covenant.
https://lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitment#p2-5-2 Though they define “disordered sexuality,” to indirectly define homosexuals as having “disordered sexuality,” they make it clear in this part of their statement on “disordered sexuality.”
To seek to understand and address the deep heart issues of identity and experience which draw some people into homosexual practice; to reach out with the love, compassion and justice of Christ, and to reject and condemn all forms of hatred, verbal or physical abuse, and victimization of homosexual people;
This article, posted on Feb. 13, 2023, was months before the McQueen article on June 24, 2023. The Dallas Morning News knew exactly what they were doing.
The intro to the article in Jacobin, “The Far Right is Funding Evangelical Super Bowl Sunday Ads,”
The intro states:
Upcoming Christian Super Bowl ads are framed as diverse and inclusive. But the money behind them comes from a rabidly antiabortion and antigay organization. [Boldface added.]
None of this is mentioned in McQueen’s Dallas Morning News article.
Texas Monthly was much clearer that they had an anti-Gay agenda and also they evasive about being anti-Gay. February 11, 2023.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/super-bowl-rebranding-jesus-he-gets-us-campaign/
Again, this article, posted on Feb. 11, 2023, was months before the McQueen article on June 24, 2023. The Dallas Morning News knew exactly what they were doing.
When the Superbowl ads for “He Gets Us” were showing the Dallas Morning News had this article by David Kinnaman.
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2023/02/10/is-jesus-having-a-cultural-moment/
The homophobia of the groups behind these ads isn’t mentioned by David Kinnaman. This is despite the fact that Kinnaman has written on the issue of homosexuality and Christianity and is very aware that the homophobia of the Christians is a factor in putting people off from Christianity. He has also written how Evangelicals might approach Gays.
David Kinnaman is a person who is providing guidance how Evangelicals can go after Lesbians and Gays. He instructs Christian predators whose prey are Lesbians and Gays.
From this article, from the Southern Baptist Texan, “Grounded in Scripture, pastors can help those struggling with homosexuality,” Oct. 24, 2011.
Barna research cited in the book “unChristian” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons found the vast majority of church-going young adults believe their churches have not prepared them to minister to their homosexual friends and co-workers.
Kinnaman’s research is mentioned as a lead in to effective tactics for Christians to oppose LGBT student groups.
I had to use the Internet Archive, because I kept finding stuff disappearing. The following is a link to a really long article, in which they are explaining that the Evangelicals need to have a new strategy in regards to homosexuals.
The application of David Kinnaman’s research is made very clear in this article at our local Dallas Theological Seminary which is very anti-Gay.
https://voice.dts.edu/article/compelling-love-the-christian-and-same-sex-attraction-barnes/
What the above article is about, is that homophobia needs to have a happy face and market itself as loving.
The Dallas Morning News choose a person who is critical to providing the guidance to redirect the Evangelical campaign against Lesbians and Gays to make their homophobic campaigns more successful to write a review of what the He Gets Us ads were about.
What do we learn from this?
Not all the deadly enemies of Gays are screaming to put Gays to death. Some what to lure them into churches where the Gay person will deny themselves. Some want to recruit people to be enemies of Lesbians and Gays with a happy face.
We have deadly enemies which slither in the dark. That are stealth.
There is Stedfast Church which even anti-Gay churches will condemn. They condemn them because it undermines their homophobic agenda. We must realize that not all smiling faces are those of friends.
It isn’t just the He Gets Us who is slithering in the dark. It is also the Dallas Morning News enabling their campaign that is slithering in the dark.
Don’t expect our local LGBT establishment to call out the Dallas Morning News for their enabling homophobia. They don’t want to be known as troublemakers.
But also don’t expect that our local LGBT establishment will tell you of the deadly homophobic things slithering in the dark either.
Reddit states
The upvote was 150, with the upvote rate being 64%. Lots and lots of anti-Gay people were voting against it. The upvote is the pro votes minus the anti-votes. So there were about 500 votes for and 350 against would result in an upvote of 150. (7/5/2023)
There were 173 comments.
So this post did fairly well in getting out to the public the fact that the Dallas Morning News was slipping homophobia under the table.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dallas/comments/14n8wfi/stealth_homophbia_and_the_dallas_morning_news/
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Do you even know the difference between a newspaper article and an opinion piece? Many of your references are to opinions, which are just that.