Politics & Power Quote by Stockwell Day

Day’s line isn’t aimed at the Supreme Court so much as it’s aimed at the referee: the media. By charging that “our national media refuses to report” key legal nuances, he frames himself as the person restoring the missing footnotes, the adult in a room supposedly run by cheerleaders. It’s a classic political move: don’t just argue the ruling, argue that the public has been lied to about what the ruling means.

The intent is narrow but potent. He wants to reopen space for a “heterosexual definition” of marriage to remain legitimate after a landmark decision that many people experienced as sweeping moral closure. Notice the careful legalistic phrasing: “did not say… in all cases,” “did it say… violated anyone’s right,” “did it say… unconstitutional.” This is argument by subtraction, using what the Court allegedly didn’t declare to imply permission to keep contesting the cultural outcome.

The subtext is that elites are laundering activism into journalism. “National media” becomes a single actor with motives, not a messy ecosystem with competing incentives. That broad brush is strategic: if you can discredit the messenger, you don’t have to win every point on the merits.

Context matters: this comes out of an era when court decisions on marriage equality were becoming symbolic tipping points. Day’s sentence tries to drag the debate back from moral narrative (“history’s verdict”) to procedural interpretation (“what was actually held”). It works rhetorically because it offers listeners a way to feel both principled and skeptical: you’re not opposing rights, you’re opposing spin.