Specious parallels

A reader emails in response to an earlier post on this topic: 

“You guys were perfectly happy to use the government to enforce your views when you were in the majority. Live by the coercive power of the state, die by the coercive power of the state.” 

I don’t think this symmetry is real. A “ban” on same-sex marriage is not like, say, a ban on marijuana: No same-sex couple gets fined or goes to jail for calling themselves married, or having a ceremony marking their commitment, and anyone is free to officiate at such a ceremony. The campaign against same-sex marriage never sought to use coercion that way. It never sought to make it illegal to provide wedding cakes to same-sex couples. Even widening our focus to the culture rather than the law, it never, to my knowledge, sought to get anyone fired from a corporation for favoring same-sex marriage. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/416376/print