Shame on the Providence Journal!

I'm trying to put together — for myself, and perhaps to sell as an essay — a coherent, conservative, compassionate, and principled strategy for handling the gay marriage debate that could, in the long run, serve everybody's interests. But what so often derails me in this sort of thinking is my raw fury at ostensibly objective media sources taking it upon themselves to be nothing short of propaganda organs for gay marriage proponents.

Yesterday, 2,000 people gathered in Boston to demand the right to vote on gay marriage. And the Providence Journal — hereafter the Velvet Rag — which hasn't, as far as I know, said a single word about smaller protests for the same purpose in other cities for which it is the closest major paper, ran an embarrassing puff piece on the promising future of the gay marriage industry in Provincetown. "The Cape Cod community long known for welcoming gays and lesbians is already marketing itself as a wedding mecca."

Note that last word — "mecca" — in the lead, and then consider the potentially offensive image with which the paper ran this story below the fold on its front page:

The story says not a single word about the protests, not one mention of the arguments of those who oppose gay marriage. Instead we get flowery imagery:

Massachusetts requires a three-day waiting period, so the "I do's" could start here on May 20, just as the crocuses are bursting behind white picket fences.

And Provincetown is described as having a "spirit of openness," "welcoming qualities," and "tradition of tolerance." And the kicker? The most egregious aspect of this non-news news story, published by a major newspaper that is geographically located in the thick of things but that can't be bothered to present anything other than raw propaganda?

The Velvet Rag borrowed it from the Los Angeles Times.

Reasonable people can disagree about gay marriage — both concerning its validity and the way in which that validity ought to be determined and translated into policy — but the joint co-option of what are perhaps the two most important secular institutions for the preservation of individual liberty — the courts and the press — for radical minority group advocacy ought not be tolerated by anybody whose interest in freedom and cooperation rises above waist level.