Scenes from the Trenches

Steve Chapman's latest article is about duelling protests that took place in Madison Wisconson. One was put on by the National Organization for Marriage, which, ironically, is mostly concerned in preventing certain kinds of marriage (in fairness, they believe that in doing so they are protecting the right kind of marriage). The other smaller protest was held by people who support Gay Marriage. Now here's where things get confusing.

Steve Chapman apparently thinks that the counter protest was more successful. He speculates that the NOM crowd wants to provoke a strong reaction in order to better portray themselves as a persecuted minority.

So why would NOM hold a rally where it is sure of being badly outnumbered by motivated and well-organized critics? Maybe because that's what it wanted. The Summer for Marriage Tour could have been called the Come Shout Us Down Tour.

The endeavor has managed to make opponents of gay marriage look like a brave, embattled minority, even though they constitute 53 percent of the public and have gotten their way in all but a few states.

Unfortunately for them, the counter-protesters don't look quite as scary as they should for this strategy to work. Instead they look like a bunch of passionate college students. Annoying, perhaps, but not fearsome.

The upshot is that the NOM crowd will continue to believe themselves persecuted and, all evidence and logic to the contrary, will point to this counter protest as proof that they are persecuted. And those in favor of legalizing Gay Marriage will continue to believe themselves persecuted as well (in fairness they actually are generally losing the elections so far, so they probably have a better claim to that position).