"I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to
anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

With that mild answer to a beauty-pageant query earlier this month, Miss
California Carrie Prejean was catapulted to the center of an international
controversy resulting in vicious attacks on her character, intelligence and
religious beliefs.

The assault began almost immediately after the 21-year-old college junior
answered a question about her views on same-sex marriage from Perez Hilton, a
gay gossip blogger and Miss USA contest judge who earned his fame by drawing
obscene doodles on celebrity photos and "outing" gay stars on his website.
Incensed by Prejean's failure to endorse his views on gay marriage, Hilton took
to the airwaves and Internet to call Prejean a string of unprintable names.

The incident would be just another laughable case of a blogger behaving badly
were it not for the fact that Hilton's histrionic response was echoed by a
chorus of more respectable voices. They ranged from the TV journalists who
fretted on air about Prejean's insensitivity and pageant officials who publicly
sided with Hilton to the parade of Hollywood celebrities who denounced Prejean
and high-ranking gay British politician Alan Duncan, who called her a "silly
[expletive]" and said that if she turns up murdered, "you will know it was me."

For all the fuss, Prejean hardly is alone in her conventional view of marriage.
Polls show that most Americans share that view and voters in 29 states,
including California, have approved state constitutional amendments banning gay
marriage. Yet Prejean did something most Americans who oppose gay marriage no
longer dare to do: She voiced her beliefs in the public square. And when
pressured to recant, she refused.

Prejean's boldness has made her the latest target of a cabal of strident
gay-rights activists and their media allies who define even the most muted
public words against same-sex marriage as hate speech. These ideologues
increasingly rely on intimidation tactics to advance their cause where
rhetorical persuasion and democratic means have failed. In an ugly twist for a
movement that once made "tolerance" its rallying cry, the most glaring examples
of intolerance in today's marriage debate come from supporters of same-sex
marriage.

That intolerance was on full display in California last fall, before and after
the passage of the Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban. Anti-Proposition 8 TV ads
blatantly stoked religious prejudices by depicting wild-eyed Mormon
missionaries gleefully terrorizing a lesbian couple. Gay activists published an
online blacklist of individual contributors to the Proposition 8 cause so those
donors could be targeted for harassment, boycotts and firings. After the
election, evangelical, Catholic and Mormon churchgoers faced angry protesters
screaming at them on their way in to their respective churches. In Palm
Springs, a raucous mob of gay-rights activists was caught on TV ripping a cross
from an elderly woman's hands and stomping on it, while shoving her and
swatting her with their placards. In Michigan, a band of gay-rights activists
incensed by the California vote disrupted an evangelical church service,
yelling at churchgoers, pulling a fire alarm and unfurling a gay pride flag
from the church balcony as part of their "Bash Back" campaign.

Such boorish behavior typically receives little coverage from the mainstream
media. Yet many Americans have noticed the increasing intolerance of the
gay-marriage movement and they resent it. Perhaps that's why Miss California
has enjoyed a surge of grassroots support in the wake of her media flogging. At
a time when many politicians and pastors are too intimidated to defend their
beliefs about marriage, a beauty queen willing to stand up to a bully is an
inspiring sight.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.