OUT GROUP

A couple paragraphs into Patrick Healy's New York Times analysis on the New York Supreme Court's decision rejecting equal marriage rights for gay couples is this peculiar turn of phrase:

Yesterday's court ruling against gay marriage was more than a legal rebuke, then — it came as a shocking insult to gay support groups.

Gay support groups? It's old news that the Times is loathe to describe the camps in language like "pro-gay" or "anti-gay" for fear of bringing down another round of rebuke from those in the latter camp, many of whom were last seen promoting the idea that the paper is willfully trying to help Al-Qaeda assassinate Donald Rumsfeld. But it's really disappointing to see the paper slip into language in describing political groups engaged in collective action to transform policies hostile to gay people which makes it sound like we're talking about individuals struggling with how to make it through a plight or pathology.