Post Can’t Disguise Disgust for Pro-marriage Maryland Ruling

In a September 18 entry on the Washington Post's Maryland Moment blog, two of the paper's writers spend most of their digital ink criticizing Tuesday's Maryland Court of Appeals ruling upholding the state’s marriage law.

Even the opening sentence reflects the Post’s bias, describing Maryland’s marriage law as “the state’s ban on gay marriage” and “the controversial law.”

For starters, the marriage law is not controversial, at least outside homosexual activist circles. All 50 states have laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman (even Massachusetts, which has no business issuing same-sex marriage licenses without a change in the law). What is controversial is the lower court ruling in January by Baltimore Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock striking the law down.And what about the Post describing Maryland’s marriage law as “the state’s ban on gay marriage?”

That’s as inaccurate as describing the law as “the state’s ban on polygamous marriage,” or “the state’s ban on incestuous marriage” or perhaps “the state’s ban on interspecies marriage.”

To liberal media, a law merely acknowledging the timeless definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman must be depicted only as a negative, as a ban rather than an affirmation.

The article by Eric Rich and John Wagner bristles with indignation and quotes homosexual activists about what to do next. Only one pro-marriage advocate is quoted, and she gets just 28 words. Maryland Assistant Attorney GeneralRobert A. Zarnoch, who defended the state law, gets a couple of quotes, and the decision itself is quoted. But taken as a whole, with pro-gay quotes from the decision itself, a pro-gay judge’s dissent and loaded arguments from homosexual activists, the article might be summed up this way:

“The ~!@#$!@ Court! Legislators! Do Something!”