False Advertising Hurts Family Values

By Riah Roe
Contributing Writer

So there I was one day sipping my favorite fresh fruit boba tea at Tea Berry, enjoying the fun taste of zippy bursting boba when a young woman came up to the counter with a flyer. There was quite a rush for tropical tasting goodness, and the flustered clerk quickly thanked the girl and set the flyer in front of me on the counter without being able to give it a good look.

Out of curiosity I picked up the flyer and started checking it out. At first I was immediately transported to a world of happiness and peace as I was confronted with kind and beautiful images of family. A husband and wife on their wedding day, grandparents, and small children, all of them were smiling happily as they celebrated life and love. Once I had secured a smile on my face about how serene these photographs were, I started reading the text and realized that it was some sort of flyer for an event that was “celebrating family”. Likewise, there was a copy of what appeared to be a proposed bill or legislative piece that would refine and further define what family was in North Dakota. Some of the points I agreed with, protecting this, respecting that. However, I noticed one very subtle point within the legislation that caught my attention; it was defining marriage as between a man and a women. I then flicked my eyes back up to the pictures where I saw a similar bible verse dictating that a relationship was meant to be between a man and a woman.

It was then clear to me that this was not only a “celebrating families” campaign, but it was an anti-gay campaign as well. I was really offended when I saw this flyer, not only because it was anti-gay but because it was sneaky about it. It is this kind of non-disclosing language that really causes me to throw my hands in the air and say “What has politics come to”? Suddenly, in order to “protect families” we need to ban gay marriage. Like, for some reasons the ultimate gay agenda is to destroy the institution of family and that their wish to join this institution is some sort of ploy against the straight (white) man.

This type of language is not just limited to marriage talk. Another favorite of mine is the “pro-life” movement; instead of saying something like “anti-choice”. What the pro-life language establishes is that anyone against the pro-life movement is clearly pro-death. I find it ironic that many people who consider themselves pro-life are also in support of the death penalty. Apparently, those people are only pro-life for so long.

However, I digress. To be fair, radical liberals also use unfair language techniques and emotional persuasion to push issues. Although in my opinion it is far more detrimental when conservatives do it. When liberals use emotional language it is often depicting horror, injustice, or inequality. Unlike those techniques there is a quantitative way of evaluating whether the claims are accurate or not. Conservative techniques like the ones mentioned above are very much “moral” based and make it impossible to argue with on equal terms. One can say “I don’t believe this is an injustice” a lot easier than saying “I am not pro-life”. In using the conservative emotional language technique an opponent has to justify how they construct morality different instead of simply saying they don’t agree with the data- as is common in liberal based arguments.

So where is this leading? Well, I wanted to continue my statement; “I hate protecting families when they don’t need protection”. As a believer in democracy and fairness, the vote against anti-gay marriage amendments in all states are very important. Minnesota specifically is going to be voting on this very soon and I would encourage all voters to take a very close look at the issue and evaluate realistic ramifications. I hardly feel that the institution of the family needs protecting from the gays. I am pretty sure Kim Kardashian is doing a good enough job of single handedly de-legitimizing the institution of marriage just fine by herself as a straight woman.

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