A Corporate Fox in the LGB Civil Rights Hen House
by Jennifer Bilek
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
―Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
With the advancement of technological and medical developments, being a sexed species, under a system of unfettered corporatism, has become more and more profitable for the medical-industrial complex (MIC).
A conglomerate of corporate legal, financial and social pressure to normalize industrial body dissociation
The LGB civil rights movement of the early 60’s and 70’s, a political fight for social acceptance of same sex orientated people, has morphed into a multi-trillion dollar industry that intersects with the medical industrial complex (MIC). Using people who are same sex attracted, and those with disorders of their sexual development, as a marketing trojan horse, the MIC has manufactured a “spectrum of synthetic sexes,” to drive profits.
In the late 70’s the AIDS crisis was just beginning in America, as were new profit opportunities for the MIC. The sale of pharmaceuticals, medical research, supplies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for gay men stricken with AIDS, rose fast. As gay men, lesbian women, and bi-sexual individuals, worked together to counter the social stigma of being same sex attracted and its new conflation with disease, while securing help for a cure, a marketing constituency was being solidified out of a sexual orientation. Following on the heels of AIDS, gay bars, gay cruises, gay bookstores, gay clubs, gay travel agencies, and what have now become LGBT NGOs, proliferated. Today, if one looks to LGBT Pride-Month, one can see the advancement of the LGBT industry into every sphere of the global market.
Identity sells.
This marketing constituency of sexual identities was born out of a medical crisis, jump starting the advancement of a civil rights movement into an industry.
As AIDS was dissipating in the U.S., what was to become the two most powerful and influential LGBT NGOs in the world, The Gill Foundation, and Arcus Foundation, were established. Founders of both organizations are billionaires who have ties to technology, finance, and the MIC. Both are gay men and have personal investments in the LGBT apparatus. They currently work together to drive the promotion of synthetic medical sexes as progressive, around the world. Jon Stryker, the founder of Arcus Foundation, uses his stock in Stryker Medical, to which he is heir, to fund Arcus Foundation.
If the three identities of LGB have been profitable, imagine four or five, or twenty, or 8 billion.
Jeen T. Grace at Center for Hispanic Marketing and Communication provides some perspective while sharing thoughts at a marketing summit: “A common mistake in engaging an LGBT audience is to assume that the entire LGBT community is a monolith who share the same beliefs, ideas, and values. If you target everyone, you are not resonating with anyone,” Grace says. “Each individual within the LGBT community should be treated as a separate target market. Marketers should use different strategies for each segment of the LGBT community.” …
