Ryan Anderson – A fresh voice on same-sex marriage

Washington Post 15 April 2015
Another day, another town. Ryan T. Anderson, the conservative movement’s fresh-faced, millennial, Ivy League-educated spokesman against same-sex marriage, has another busy schedule.

There is an interview with conservative talk radio, a debate with a liberal professor at the University of Colorado’s law school and, after that, a lecture to Catholic students eager to hear Anderson’s view that the Constitution does not require that marriage be “redefined” to include same-sex couples.

The Supreme Court will soon be deciding just that question. And Anderson, a 33-year-old scholar at the Heritage Foundation, has emerged as a leading voice for those who resent being labeled hopelessly old-fashioned — or, worse, bigoted — for believing that marriage should be only between a man and a woman.

“Gays and lesbians undoubtedly have been discriminated against,” Anderson says. “But marriage is not part of that discrimination.”

Anderson says he has no illusions that his arguments will turn the tide, at least for now, but that he feels it is important to “reassure” those who agree with him and try to make others think.

He has become a circuit rider with an iPad, filled with philosophy and (disputed) social science. Anderson says he is happy if Americans at least consider his message: that government’s interest in regulating marriage is to protect the offspring that come only from the male-female union, not to validate the desires of adults.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/a-fresh-face-emerges-as-a-leader-in-the-movement-against-same-sex-marriage/2015/04/15/d78cf256-dece-11e4-be40-566e2653afe5_story.html