The Politics of Marriage

Steve Chapman attends a National Organization for Marriage speech and sees how defenders of traditional marriage hope to use their raucous critics to their own advantage: “It’s hard to get terribly outraged when a group that goes out of its way to be drowned out by its critics almost gets drowned out by its critics. But the people here to support ‘traditional marriage’ can accurately claim that they have been impeded in their effort to communicate their views. You see, NOM and its allies attest that after all, they don’t want to deny the other side the right to speak. They just want to enjoy the same right. To which the other side might reply: Hmm. Kind of like what we say about marriage.”