The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has found that the following one-liner is the most effective way of communicating support for traditional marriage: “Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose, [but] they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.”  I like it.  It communicates two important things:

  1. Opposition to recognizing same-sex marriage is not tantamount to opposition against homosexual behavior itself.  Many advocates of traditional marriage are content to let gays and lesbians engage in homosex in the privacy of their own homes (tolerant), but do not consent to letting gays and lesbians redefine the historic understanding of marriage in order to ascertain a sense of social respectability.
  2. Same-sex marriage advocates are forcing their views on the majority through political lobbying and the courts, which is both unfair and undemocratic.

One minor improvement to this statement would be to preface it with “I believe in tolerance, so I think….”  Using the actual word “tolerance” will help us communicate to an audience who thinks of tolerance as one of the prime virtues.

NOM highly suggests that we avoid speaking of “banning same-sex marriage” because it is unnecessary, and this language has a negative connotation.  Indeed, there is no need to ban same-sex marriage so long as the traditional definition is left intact.  Instead, we should speak of being opposed to “redefining marriage” or supportive of “marriage as the union of husband and wife.”