Marriage Quote by Jim Bunning

Activists, in Jim Bunning's telling, are less citizens than a creeping force: relentless, coordinated, and faintly conspiratorial. The verb choices do the heavy lifting. "Impose" frames political advocacy as coercion, not persuasion. "Extreme" pre-labels the opponent's position so the listener doesn't have to consider it on the merits. "Plotted out" tips from disagreement into suspicion, implying a backroom scheme rather than open, lawful strategy. It's a sentence engineered to move the audience from policy debate to defensive posture.

The real argument isn't only about marriage; it's about legitimacy. By contrasting judicial decisions with "the voice of the people", Bunning taps a familiar American anxiety: that elites, courts, and procedure can outmaneuver popular consent. The subtext is that the democratic process has been hijacked - not by voters changing their minds, but by activists shopping for favorable venues and sympathetic judges. "State-by-state strategy" makes a standard legal tactic sound like an invasion plan, turning federalism into a battleground map.

Context matters: this is the era when same-sex marriage was advancing through state courts and constitutional challenges, often faster than legislatures were willing to move. Opponents leaned hard on the language of "judicial activism" and "redefinition", insisting marriage was being altered rather than expanded. Bunning's line is designed to delegitimize the outcome before it arrives: if courts rule in favor, the decision is cast not as rights-recognition but as rule-by-activist, and anyone uneasy about rapid cultural change is handed a clear villain.