Many university students have no problem rejecting critical thought in exchange for a free t-shirt. At least, that appeared to be the take-home message of last week's Love is Love campaign sponsored by the University's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center. Feb. 12, dozens of students attended classes wearing the red shirts emblazoned with the bold message "Love is Love." Although the virtue of the message is debatable, the campaign could be called a success based on the sheer number of participants. Considering the campaign with more than a precursory glance, however, its methods are clearly questionable. Students should bear in mind psychologist Carl Jung's observation that "the masses are always breeding grounds of psychic endemics." The Love is Love campaign proved little more than an exercise in unsophisticated thinking and the dexterous use of propaganda to advance a social agenda.
One of the primary functions of a university campus is to serve as a place for intelligent debate on controversial issues. University members should possess the foresight, however, to combat the methods of interest groups when the groups' arguments degenerate into a simplistic campaign for social manipulation. For instance, the announcement promoting the Love is Love campaign found on the Office of the Dean of Student's Web site makes the assertion that, "all relationships are equal. All love is equal. Love is Love. It's not about what it looks like; it's about how it feels." To deny the complexity of love by ignoring the variation in human relationships erodes the campaign's validity. In the modern era, arguments should be based on fact, not feeling. When a claim is based solely on an emotional appeal, the public should immediately call into question both the validity of the assertion and the political motivation of its supporters.
Unfortunately, a good number of University students lack that basic ability to think critically, as evidenced by the alarming number of students who participated in the campaign without possessing the ability to articulate its message. As one female student responded when asked about the t-shirt, "Umm, they were handing them out upstairs [in Newcomb] ... I think it has something to do with gay rights." If the LGBT wants any rational individual to subscribe to its message, the organization must actually educate the people it uses unabashedly as human billboards. Of course, based on the stratagem of the campaign, the true objective may not be to persuade intelligently but rather to influence subliminally. The LGBT did not even put its logo on the shirts, which could be interpreted as another mechanism to mask a social agenda behind the campaign.
The employment of emotionally based propaganda is a historically effective technique used by certain groups to garner power over the unthinking population. The LGBT's Love is Love campaign stands in the proud tradition of appeals like the Bolshevik Party's "peace, land, and bread," used in the 1917 Communist Revolution to gain the support of the uneducated Russian peasantry. Unfortunately, as the student body demonstrated last week, education does not produce absolute immunity against the effects of propaganda. The Love is Love campaign serves as only one example in which parts of the University community have quickly thrown their ill-informed support behind a movement characterized by an alluring slogan. Students prove just as malleable on political issues as on social concerns. That was demonstrated perfectly during the 2008 presidential election when the University was fired up for "change we can believe in," even when many students could not articulate then-candidate Barack Obama's basic platform.
Supporting an interest group that one feels strongly about is an admirable undertaking. However, endorsing a campaign with little information about the movement's objectives is irresponsible. Though reserving judgment on the cause, the leaders of the Love is Love campaign and the Office of the Deans of Students should be questioned regarding their support of an oversimplified and clandestine attempt to manipulate public opinion in favor of LGBT supported issues. The campaign made a moral error by failing to properly educate its participants on the campaign's causes and by not disclosing the sponsor or purpose of the event on the t-shirts. Unfortunately, the University community's rational analysis of the Love is Love event proved as simplistic as the slogan used to support the campaign.
Ginny Robinson's column appears biweekly Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at g.robinson@cavalierdaily.com
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