NOM BLOG

SSM and the Manufacture of Consent

 

Doug Mainwaring and Stella Morabito in theĀ Washington Examiner about the constant attempt to shift public opinion on marriage through misleading polling:

"Polling data is easily manufactured through intensive campaigns by special interests such as the gay marriage lobby. Such data are then publicized and repeated to create a false illusion of collective belief. This is known as an "opinion cascade."

White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and economist Timur Kuran once wrote a Stanford Law Review article on this topic, referring to a cascade as "a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse."

Poll numbers, celebrity endorsements, politically correct media hype and other forces work together to shut up those who disagree with same-sex marriage and to construct an illusion of much broader support than exists. Once individuals perceive social punishment for expressing a dissenting view, they often clam up, and thereby aid the cascade. But such a process creates fragile support."

12 Comments