Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal:

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president in 2008, he declared that marriage is between a man and a woman. For the most part, his position was treated as a nonissue.

Now Rick Santorum is campaigning for president. He too says that marriage is between a man and a woman. What a different reaction he gets.

There's no mystery why. Mr. Santorum is attacked because everyone understands that he means what he says.

President Obama, by contrast, gets a pass because everyone understands—nudge nudge, wink wink—that he's not telling the truth. The press understands that this is just one of those things a Democratic candidate has to say so he doesn't rile up the great unwashed.

It's arguably the most glaring double standard in American life today. It helps explain why candidates with social views that are fairly conventional among ordinary Americans—the citizens of 31 states including California have rejected same-sex marriage when put to a vote—find themselves depicted as extreme.

Here are some highlights from NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher's recent appearance on Al-Jazeera English TV.

On the question (which often comes up in interviews) that more people support redefining marriage, Maggie reminds us:

"...Only 40% [of Americans] support gay marriage. What we've found is the polls have consistently overstated support for gay marriage because Americans are becoming sensitive to how the question is worded and they're also concerned about, they don't want to appear anti-gay, but when you go to the polling booth, it's clear that [marriage] is a very mainstream winning position in America today, whatever [gay marriage activists] hope to create in America down the road."

And she continues:

"I was told that the pro-life sentiment would be virtually disappearing from the public square because all the young people were [pro-choice] in 1978, instead, as the movement has worked to stand for values and pull other Americans together we're now in a country where close to half of the people or more say they are pro-life so, we'll see what happens in the future but I will promise you today and in November of 2012 not being for gay marriage is not going to hurt Santorum, or Romney or Gingrich.

At this point Pew Forum Research Center's senior researcher David Masci adds:

"I agree with Maggie when she says that polling sometimes doesn't get this. In California there were a whole slew of polls before Proposition 8 was approved that showed Proposition 8 being defeated and of course it was ultimately approved, admittedly by a slim margin, but still I believe I think it was 51-48 or something, so sometimes polls don't get this right and I also agree with her about abortion, in fact if anything the number of people who oppose abortion has actually ticked up in recent years, so we don't know what the future holds."