Protect Marriage Arizona - Pma

In 2006, Arizona had become the first state in the United Stated that defeated Protect Marriage Arizona (PMA). PMA is a marriage amendment that created the proposition 107, which it believes that a marriage should only be accepted when a combination is between one man and one woman. And the proposition also states that unmarried couples should not be recognized as a legal status. Many scholars had explored many correlations between immigration and sexuality. However, Chavez wrote this essay to combine the existed knowledge's with two strategies, "straight- washing" and "white washing", for Arizona Together (AT), the opponent organization of PMA, to succeed the ballot. These two tactics are successfully against PMA because of the poor status Arizonans have toward immigrants. The main focus of this essay is mainly on the Rhetorical tradition of the seven traditions of communication, in which he describes, analyses, and interprets. He uses the process of invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory to persuade the voters. Chavez ties up with context to help improve public task, educate them, and contribute to understand the audience.

Chavez learned the two strategies for defeating PMA from the chair of AT. AT centered the ideas of fairness, justice, and equality for both strategies. AT reminded the voters that it was the basic sense of humans for all the people, both heterosexual and homosexual, to have the rights of dignity, respect, and value. Straight- washing was the first tactic that AT applied by giving a real life example of an elderly heterosexual couple and mentioned how their rights would be taken away if the voters voted for yes. AT also used the language that all the population could understand. It would always mention the things about LGBT at the end in order to make people understand the point and not to be too overwhelming to them. Second, straight- washing was another successful strategy that AT used by relating the situation to the major issues in the state- immigrants. AT reminded the voters that citizens should have received all the rights, which made the voters think of losing citizens' rights for voting yes was just similar to the situation when immigrants came into the state.

As the result, Arizonans thought of citizens' rights as the most priority thing, which made the issues of LGBT invisible. AT knew that most of the Arizonans still could not accept LGBT. It used the two strategies to be on the same page as the voters, to tell the voters that its purpose of doing this was not giving some special rights to LGBT. It also made it clear to the voters that it did not take a position on the immigration issues by voting for no. By avoiding the same mistakes other states had made, by understanding what Arizonans wanted, and by using the appropriate languages and strategies, AT finally succeeded persuading the voters to vote for no and defeated PMA.

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