The Forum > Article Comments > Demonise and censor: the winning strategy of the gay marriage movement > Comments
Demonise and censor: the winning strategy of the gay marriage movement : Comments
By David van Gend, published 5/6/2015As for me, I am a “bigot” in big red painted letters on the wall of my medical centre this week, courtesy of a local vandal who does not like my opposition to same-sex marriage.
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When restaurants in the southern states of the US were forbidden to serve people of one race, they were still restaurants. Their nature did not change. When laws forbad a man of one race from marrying a woman of another, they were a restriction on access to marriage: i.e., a restriction on access to the union of one man and one woman. They were not changes in the meaning of marriage. It should be a simple matter to distinguish between what marriage is and who has access to it. If marriage is the union of a man and a woman, then banning certain women from marrying certain men is a restriction on access but not calling a non-marriage a marriage is not a restriction on access but acceptance that words have meanings.
Undoubtedly the campaign to steal the word “marriage” has succeeded in convincing most people. Consequently, any campaigner for anything ought to study it for pointers to success with their own issues – whether logical or absurd.
The same-sex marriage campaign has two lessons: the first is you can convince people of anything if you frame the debate the right way (as long as it does not cost any money); the second is you can never predict what issue will be created at some future date for people who did not give a toss about the issue in the previous 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years to suddenly become self-righteously passionate about it and condemnatory of all those poor benighted souls who did not jump aboard the new bandwagon the day they themselves did.