Pride Month: After the Ball - A Summary

I have been challenging people to read this book since it was introduced to me by Voddie Baucham
when I had him in to speak to my students when I was still in education.

I purchased the book used back then for about $15. Today (June 8, 2026), you can get a copy here for more than that price. Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=after+the+ball+book&crid=6RI8XQMAHFMO&sprefix=after+the+ball%2Caps%2C160&ref=nb_sb_ss_p13n-expert-pd-ops-ranker_1_14

I wonder why it's so expensive? Not because its a classic American piece of literature. Maybe because they don't want you to know.

Marshall Kirk was a neuropsychiatrist, and Kirk Madsen a public relations expert (double check me on that). Their book is not primarily a philosophical argument for gay rights, but a PR and propaganda manual dressed in the language of social science. They were writing to the gay community, telling them what they needed to do to win public opinion. Their bluntness about the manipulative nature of their program is remarkable.

Kirk and Madsen’s Strategic Goal

Kirk and Madsen’s goal is (was then and still is because their strategy has become so ingrained that the book is not needed) to win mainstream American acceptance of homosexuality by desensitizing, jamming, and converting the broader public. These are their own words for their own three-stage framework.

They were explicit. This is not about changing minds through argument. It is about changing feelings through psychological conditioning operating largely below the level of conscious awareness.

The Three-Stage Strategy

I can’t summarize the whole book. If you are a TRC member and would like to read my copy, I’ll allow you to borrow it. But I can give you the highlights.

There are also very uncomfortable things they discuss that they encourage the homosexual community to keep in the dark because it won’t win them allies.

Here is their strategy:

1. Desensitize

Flood the domains of society. The goal is to make homosexuality so omnipresent in media, conversation, and culture that the average person becomes emotionally numb to it. Desensitized. Not
convinced. Not persuaded. Simply worn down by saturation exposure until the emotional alarm response no longer fires.

The tactic is classical conditioning. Repeated neutral or positive exposure gradually extinguishes the aversive response. Kirk and Madsen were quite open that this is the intended psychological tool.

2. Jam

This is the silencing and shaming phase. Anyone who expresses disapproval of homosexuality is to be associated through the media using images, rhetoric, and social pressure with bigots, racists, Nazis, and abusers. The goal is not to refute the objector's argument but to make the social and psychological cost of objecting so high that people just shut up and become afraid of opposing the argument.

Hold the traditional moral position, feel the social pain of being branded a hater, shut up.

This is why the rhetorical strategy by those who support the movement but were logical in their position went from "I disagree with your opposition" to "you are a hateful bigot". It was designed
that way.

3. Conversion

This is not theological conversion, or psychological and emotional conversion. The goal here is to shift the average American's sympathies by flooding culture with gay figures who are presented as normal, likeable, non-threatening, and relatable. Specifically, they sought to portray gay people as victims of unjust hatred, thus triggering the American instinct toward sympathy for the underdog.

They sought to feature gay figures who are professionals, parents, contributors, not the radical who is up to something subversive, as they actually are. They had to avoid the person who struggled with homosexuality and didn’t want it and was looking for help.

They taught that they had to suppress or distance themselves from any imagery that triggers discomfort in public-facing messaging.

They sought to use celebrity endorsement and the "halo effect" by attaching the cause to beloved and trusted public figures

Key Supporting Tactics For LGBTQ+

Never debate the morality or biology: Both are losing ground. Instead, keep the conversation on
the emotional register: suffering, dignity, love.

Control the vocabulary: "Gay" not "homosexual”. "Homophobia" reframes opposition as psychological pathology rather than moral position.

Target the media: Television above all. A gay character in a beloved sitcom does more than a thousand articles in other publications.

Marginalize religious opposition: Not by arguing with opposition but by associating it with extremism, violence, and hatred.

Appeal to civil rights framing: This is most nefarious, and the Black community, not all
but many, have allowed their just cause to be coopted. They sought to borrow the moral authority of the African American civil rights movement. Voddie Baucham sought to write about this in a book I don’t believe he was ever able to publish he titled: “Gay is the new Black”.

Why This Matters

First, Kirk and Madsen were not naive idealists. These authors were strategists who knew exactly what they were doing and flat out say it in their book. The book is an unusually transparent window into how manufactured cultural consensus actually works.

Second, the jamming phase is what has most directly affected the church. The cost of holding a traditional sexual ethic has been deliberately engineered to be socially painful. Understanding this helps pastors and congregations understand why many church members feel enormous internal pressure even when they haven't been directly argued out of their convictions.

No doubt there are some who have friends and relatives who struggle with this issue, and rightly our sympathies are affected. Ministering to our friends and family who are in this fight is another issue. I’m simply trying to show you how we got here with the messaging socially.

Third, the strategy has been extraordinarily successful. It is arguably one of the most effective cultural campaigns in modern American history. Understanding why it worked (emotional conditioning, not rational persuasion) is essential for thinking about how the church engages culture going forward. Think about that. Emotional conditioning not rational, truthful persuasion.

Fourth, the church's response cannot simply be a louder argument. If the battlefield is emotional conditioning, the church needs to think about biblical spiritual formation for its members. People formed in covenant fellowship, rooted in Scripture, and shaped by the practices of the fellowship are the long-term way we overcome this emotional campaign of lies. Discipleship like this will make our people far more resistant to cultural conditioning than people who are merely intellectually informed, and we must be intellectually informed by truth.

Ok, that’s enough. Pass this on if you feel compelled.