The Lantern

Issue date: 9/17/07 Section: Opinion

After what had to have been some of the most excruciating seven to 12 seconds of intense brainstorming of my life, I discovered much to my delight the deliciously diabolical strategy the right wing constantly employs to win arguments against the left and garner mass amounts of support behind its causes.

You ready? Here it is: They simply change what the issue is about to make it an easier win.

Take gay marriage for example. With popular culture swinging the way of tolerance, as it should be, the right wing - more specifically the Christian right - saw it was going to be fighting an uphill battle to prevent gays from getting married.

This was a problem for them.

So what did they do? They changed what the issue was about and turned the tables completely. Suddenly, they weren't discriminating or persecuting anyone. They were "defending" the "sanctity" of marriage. Think about it. It's diabolically ingenious. Everyone always roots for the underdog.

Then here's how gullible some gay rights activists are. They come back with arguments like (and I've heard this one a ton): "Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Where's the sanctity in that?" A valid point it surely is, but do you see what just happened? They were lured hook, line and sinker into the argument their opponents changed it to be, and now they were doing exactly what they wanted: assaulting the holy sacrament of marriage.

The same goes for abortion. As hard as this might be to comprehend, the advocates for choice do have a reasonable and compelling argument. They said: "Women are always going to have abortions. Let's provide them legal outlets to get them done safely by professionals while at the same time look for ways to reduce the number of occurrences."

Nowhere will you find a person who supports the procedure itself. Even so, opponents ingeniously label themselves "pro-life," two words that effectively vilify those who support choice.

Now, as with gay marriage, the issue has been altered to de-emphasize the reasonability of one side's argument and to accentuate the righteousness of the other's. Now, it has to do with when life "technically" starts because the opponents of choice know that this is an argument they simply can't lose. And, as can be expected, they say it occurs as soon as a child is conceived. And even though it is absolutely futile to try to argue against that, there are some gullible choice advocates who sink to that level and fire back that it doesn't technically start until so-and-so trimester because some random study somewhere that someone did concluded that embryos can't feel feelings until then, or they don't yet have neurons firing in their brains or they don't yet have heartbeats and the list goes on. Little do they know, they're completely shooting themselves in the foot because now it sounds as though they are simply justifying murder, playing right into the hands of their counterparts, and doing so all while in the watchful public eye.

Once again, diabolically ingenious.

These same arguments apply as well in the debate about stem cell research. Opponents say it's inhumane to take life for the chance to save life. However, the fact that a majority of the embryos from which the cells would be extracted will be disposed of whether they're put to use or not, doesn't often see the light of day and isn't given much consideration by opponents of the research.

This tactic - of changing what issues are about to their advantage - has worked so well for the right wing that it's a wonder they haven't gotten a patent for it.

What's next? Signs that tell people who are fed up with the war to support their troops?

Ben Zenitsky is a senior in journalism. He can be reached at zenitsky.1@osu.edu.

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