Katherine Kersten is the senior fellow at Center of the American Experiment. She writes in the Star Tribune:

A block thrown through a home window. Cars vandalized. Hate-filled anonymous phone calls at home and work. Swastikas scrawled on houses of worship. Physical assaults. Dismissal from employment because of political views.

Are these examples of retaliation against civil-rights activists in the South in 1954? Attempts by an authoritarian government to quash dissent?

No, this is the sort of intimidation that Americans who support marriage as the union of a man and woman can face today. Persecution of opponents is becoming a tool of the trade for some gay-marriage activists, who -- ironically -- seem to view themselves as beacons of tolerance.

Now, the groundwork for such intimidation is being laid in Minnesota.

In an early skirmish in the battle over the marriage amendment, which will be on the ballot in 2012, the state Campaign Finance Board has issued a ruling that could require a nonprofit organization to disclose the identity of supporters if that organization contributes to the marriage-amendment campaign.

The board's ruling breaks with the interpretation of the law in other recent amendment campaigns, and is an attempt to change the rules in midstream.

As a result, Minnesotans who believe that gay people have a right to live as they wish, but who oppose redefining marriage, may find their civil rights, livelihoods or safety threatened if they dare to oppose what's becoming politically correct orthodoxy.

She also mentions NOM's latest project -- the Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance:

Given this reality, we need an organization to defend Americans who face reprisals merely because they exercise their fundamental civil rights.

Now we have it: the Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance (MarriageADA), whose spokesperson, Maggie Gallagher, is a cofounder of the National Organization for Marriage.

...MarriageADA's larger mission is to fight back against the attempt of media, entertainment and political elites to convince the rest of society that belief in marriage as a male/female institution -- the form it has taken across the world and throughout history -- is equivalent to racial bigotry.

America's need for MarriageADA should open our eyes to the increasingly Orwellian situation we face. It's becoming an act of civic courage -- as speaking out against Jim Crow in the South once was -- to support marriage as a bedrock male/female social institution, and to state your belief that children need a mother and a father.

This raises a troubling question: If gay marriage supporters can intimidate and silence their opponents while one man/one woman marriage remains the norm, to what authoritarian extremes will they go if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land?