Promises Are Made of Air

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The gay community's reaction to the Obama administration's insulting and slanderous brief in the Smelt case has had some effect. A DNC fundraiser set for next week is falling apart, and the President will announce he wants to give the same federal benefits to homosexual federal employees as he gives to heterosexuals (well, some of the same federal benefits; health care seems to be off the table - the single "benefit" that comprises the lion's share of all employee benefits).

We have every right to be furious at the President, but it's important that we be furious for the right reasons.

I don't think it is fair to criticize the administration for filing the brief. The well-intentioned but hapless plaintiffs in this case have gotten themselves (and the rest of us) in over their heads. They are certain to lose their case, and it's better if they lose early on procedural grounds rather than in a published opinion that rules against us on the constitutional issues. The administration is doing nothing wrong in filing a brief to clear away this irritation.

The brief did not need to go any further than the procedural issues, and would almost certainly have prevailed on that ground. It was a mistake to have gone further. But when it did wade into the constitutional issues, it adopted arguments - as the administration's - that cannot be entertained by any reasonable person. The argument (and I quote) that "DOMA does not distinguish among persons of different sexual orientations, but rather it limits federal benefits to those who have entered into the traditional form of marriage," is a non sequitur. As Joe Solomonese so tartly put it, this is to say that "DOMA does not discriminate against gay people, but rather only provides federal benefits to heterosexuals." Spend some time with that analysis, because Solomonese nails it. The argument assumes it is possible to provide benefits only to heterosexuals in a way that does not discriminate against homosexuals. Would it also be possible to provide benefits only to men and not discriminate against women? Or to provide benefits to whites in a way that does not discriminate against people of color?

There is only one way to reconcile these incompatible ideas; adopt the right's still dominant theory that all people are really heterosexual, and could marry someone of the opposite sex if they weren't so insistent on being perverse. Everyone could get "traditionally" married, and should, so it is right to design public policy to benefit only that form of marriage. Gay people do not exist in this worldview.

This is good enough for the right, but it is not good enough for this administration - and I don't think the President believes it. But when you look at the miniscule gesture of federal benefits, you can see the real problem he faces. The reason he cannot grant health care benefits to federal employees is because DOMA is still on the books. DOMA is the single law that most fully incorporates that outdated notion of a world that has no homosexuals in it.

The President has promised - repeatedly - that he will work to repeal DOMA. But that's all he's done: promise. Similarly, he has promised to repeal DADT. All the federal benefits and hate crimes laws and even ENDAs in the world cannot balance out the harm these two laws, which actively incorporate discrimination against lesbians and gay men in federal law, do.

DADT must go, entirely. And about 70% of Americans agree. That is how perverse discrimination can be - on this single issue, the most talented politician of our era is afraid of 30% of his constituents.

The numbers are very different for DOMA, and the President is right to be cautious. But there is no need to repeal all of DOMA in order to minimize its damage. It makes political sense to keep section 2 of DOMA in place, which allows individual states to wall themselves off from progress, while repealing section 3, the part that prohibits the federal government from recognizing any equal treatment for same-sex couples.

I can think of no president in my lifetime - no politician, in fact - who is more capable of understanding what the gay community experiences, and who could, if he chose, articulate for the American people a course of action. It is his abject failure on that front so far that has made the DOJ brief such a catastrophe. I hope his speech tonight helps to clarify that we can expect something more than just gestures from him in the next few years.

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No DOMA Repeal, But Fringe Benefits for Federal Workers. Now Be Quiet and Write Me More Checks

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The New York Times on Tuesday called Obama out for his about-face support of the Defense of Marriage Act:

The Obama administration, which came to office promising to protect gay rights but so far has not done much, actually struck a blow for the other side last week. It submitted a disturbing brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which is the law that protects the right of states to not recognize same-sex marriages and denies same-sex married couples federal benefits. The administration needs a new direction on gay rights.

Later that same day, the Washington Post reported on its website (and then in Wednesday's paper) that the administration would extend federal benefits to unmarried partners of federal workers. Will that appease LGBT Democratic liberals, who have shown themselves extremely easy to appease in the name of party unity? Stay tuned.

More. The Wall Street Journal clarifies, "The president doesn't have the power to grant gay and lesbian partners of federal workers health care and many other benefits." That's because "The government is prevented from granting many federal benefits under the Defense of Marriage Act." But, the Journal adds, "he could take other steps, such as offering family services like language training and evacuation assistance for State Department workers." Woo-hoo!

But fear not. For Pride week, Obama is signing a directive banning discrimination against LGBT federal workers (Clinton signed an executive order covering gay workers and Bush left it in place; Obama's directive includes the transgendered). Change we can believe in!

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It Shouldn’t Matter. Except It Does

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So, Adam Lambert comes out in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, and you're thinking, "What's next? Rolling Stone announces 'Water is wet'"?

I get where you're coming from. But there are deeper lessons to be gleaned.

First, notice how Lambert comes out-in a music magazine, with his sexuality occupying a relatively minor portion of the article. And he does so with the candid yet indirect phrasing "I don't think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that I'm gay." The gayness is almost taken for granted-embedded in a sentence about public reaction, rather than placed front and center.

That approach reflects a larger trend in how society-and in particular, younger generations-view gayness: as a simple matter-of-fact, not something to be belabored. The contrast with Clay Aiken's "Yes, I'm Gay" People Magazine cover is subtle but important.

And yet, second, there's an ambivalence in the article that captures the national tone on the issue. Lambert says, "It shouldn't matter. Except it does. It's really confusing."

He's right on all three counts.

"It shouldn't matter." American Idol is a singing competition, and Lambert wanted to-and should-be judged on his vocal performance. His decision to wait until after Idol to answer the gay question, he claims, stemmed from his desire that his sexuality not overshadow his singing. (It may also have stemmed from a desire for votes, and I couldn't blame him for that. It's not as if he lied about being gay or took great pains to hide it.)

"Except it does [matter]." As Lambert himself put it in the interview, "There's the old industry idea that you should just make sexuality a non-issue, just say your private life's your private life, and not talk about it. But that's bullshit, because private lives don't exist anymore for celebrities: they just don't."

The music industry doesn't just sell songs; it sells images. For better or worse, personal backstory is part of that (especially on Idol).

What's more, gay celebrities give hope to closeted gay kids, who need to know that they're not alone and who sometimes don't have gay role models in their everyday lives. That's not to say that Adam Lambert is any more representative of gay life than any other gay person. It's just to say that his representation, such as it is, will reach more people.

"It's really confusing." Yes indeed. We live in a nation where, for some people, much of the time, gayness is a non-issue, and for others, virtually constantly, it's huge. American Idol is one of those "common denominator" phenomena (say that three times fast!) where these different groups interact with each other. Often they can do so while avoiding the issue of sexuality. But not always.

And the tension here is not just between groups; it's also internal. When Lambert says, "I'm proud of my sexuality. I embrace it. It's just another part of me," he unwittingly raises a question-one that opponents often hurl at us: "Why be 'proud' of something that's 'just another part' of you?" Why take pride in a trait that you didn't choose and is supposed to be no big deal?

Answer: because it is a big deal. It does matter. Maybe in an ideal world it wouldn't, but we are still far from that world.

Ironically, it's a big deal precisely because our opponents insist on making it a big deal. Thanks to them, Adam Lambert (like every gay person) has to negotiate the issue of revealing his sexuality in a way that straight people never do. I think he's handled it admirably.

Lambert told Rolling Stone that "I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader." Fair enough. But it's also fair to note that civil-rights change doesn't only come from civil-rights leaders. It also comes from countless small acts of revelation by ordinary and not-so-ordinary people, including Adam Lambert.

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Noel Coward’s Outdated Defiance

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Noel Coward's "Design for Living" - now in revival by the Shakespeare Theatre Company - shocked audiences when it premiered on Broadway in 1933. It's not hard to see why.

The play, about a polyandrous relationship between two men and a woman, makes no apologies for its liberationist view of sex and relationships and could hardly be more direct in its sympathetic presentation of gay attachment. "Design for Living" was considered so risque that Coward had to wait until 1939 before staging a production in London for fear of offending British censors.

Seen today, the play shocks, but for an altogether different reason: Its message is so outdated that it's bewildering why any theater would put it on except for its curatorial interest as a period artifact.

The story begins in a dilapidated Paris garret shared by Otto, a painter, and his lover Gilda, a sprightly, if aimless young interior designer who proudly expresses her view that marriage, at least for her, is "repellent." She wishes she could believe "in God, the Daily Mailand Mother India" but instead leads a life of carefree bohemianism and free love. Gilda, you see, isn't just in love with Otto. She's also in love with Leo, a wandering playwright who has just returned to Paris. This isn't a typical love triangle, however, in that Leo also is in love with Otto, and Otto is in love with them both. Together, they are waging a "private offensive against the moral code," in the words of a 1933 Time magazine cover story about Coward. The upholder of this code is Ernest Friedman, a stately and punctilious art dealer who faults Gilda for leading a "dreadfully untidy" life. (His first name isn't incidental.)

The trio's fragile harmony is upset by the unexpected and early return of Leo, who shares "an unpremeditated roll in the hay" with Gilda. Otto becomes distraught and furious when he discovers this infidelity, and the betrayers express what appears to be sincere guilt about "cheating" on him. Otto storms off, while Gilda follows Leo to London, where he soon becomes a very successful playwright and the toast of the town. (The play is loosely autobiographical; Coward had a similar, though nonsexual, relationship with the husband-and-wife acting team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and the three performed together in the play's Broadway debut).

What makes "Design for Living" even more defiant of prewar social mores of its time is that the characters do not view their domestic arrangements as anything of which to be ashamed; to the contrary, it is society's expectations that they deem immoral. "I shouldn't feel cozy married!" Gilda tells Leo when he half-seriously proposes that they elope, if only to make gliding along the London society circuit less awkward. "It would upset my moral principles." Leo, for his part, confesses that there's "no use making any of us toe the line for long" when confronted with the prospect of matrimony.

This all made for very interesting stuff in the 1930s and could accurately be said to characterize a certain gay sensibility of the era. Decades before a concept like same-sex marriage was in the consciousness of gays, it was understandable that gay artists would mock the sort of conventional social arrangements that were closed off to them (unless, of course, they sublimated their nature). Indeed, those rare gays who sought to "couple" were mocked for "playing at" traditional heterosexual life, not just by straights but by their fellow "inverts."

Much of the "Design" protagonists' dialogue can be read as inchoate yet by now dated arguments for tolerance of homosexuality; Otto defends the threesome as immoral "only when measured up against other people's standards" and speaks of seeking "our own solutions for our own peculiar moral problems." In a line that the latter-day gay rights movement could borrow without alteration from Coward's script, Otto admonishes Gilda for worrying about societal disapproval by stating that their lives are "none of their business, we aren't doing any harm to anybody else."

The three lead characters were curiosities in the 1930s, so rare was the openly bisexual or gay person, never mind the proudly polyamorous. Today, however, they just come across as self-obsessed, vain and cruel.

"Design for Living" premiered in an era when traditional ideas about sex and the role of women in society were being challenged, and the play's notoriety almost surely had something to do with the audience's vicarious envy of the characters' ability to break free of oppressive conventions. In the ensuing 70-plus years, however, America has witnessed the wages of free love, and we've decided they're not pretty. The play's controversy is obsolete; there really is no serious constituency these days arguing for the virtue of non-monogamous relationships. And as much as gays have been cultural iconoclasts, it's difficult to imagine a leading gay playwright of Coward's artistic stature today endorsing the sort of message presented in "Design for Living."

Indeed, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn in my presumption that "Design for Living" would stick in the craw of most gays today. Its unsubtle conflation of polyandry and homosexuality as "lifestyles" equally deserving of social approval is the very sort of "slippery slope" argument proffered by religious conservatives to which gay marriage proponents so strenuously object.

The play is not as antiquated as art deco, swing dancing and other artifacts of the 1930s. It even might have served as a socially relevant statement in the 1960s, during the American cultural revolution, and as late as the 1970s or early 1980s, the age of gay liberation, when activists argued that frequent (and anonymous) sex with multiple partners was more than just a civil right; it was a fundamental part of being gay. AIDS made hash of that viewpoint, as did the general ideological maturation of a community that, while still fighting for equal rights, has earned a societal tolerance that neither Coward nor any gay person of his time ever could have imagined.

I suspect that today's more enlightened understanding of homosexuality as something wholly natural to the human experience and unthreatening to society had something to do with the audience's confused response to the play's fundamental moral darkness. This reaction was most apparent during the final scene, when Gilda must decide between her two young lovers and Ernest, whom she has married and with whom she has decamped to New York. In a sputtering and pathetic spectacle, Ernest condemns the play's putative heroes and their uninhibited ways, yelling that he "could never understand this disgusting three-sided erotic hotchpotch." Red in the face, he farcically trips on a stack of recently acquired paintings as he stomps furiously out of the room.

Until this point in the production, it isn't entirely clear which side in this fundamental dispute Coward will endorse. But by the end of the play, his ambition is obvious: a rejection of monogamy as a societal ideal in favor of whatever floats one's individual boat. As Ernest storms off the stage spewing invective like machine-gun fire, Leo, Otto and Gilda lie erotically curled over one another on the couch in a fit of hysterics, and we're meant to laugh with them in this victory of independence and bohemianism over bourgeois constrictions. But the audience at the performance I attended viewed this triumph with bewildered silence, and I have no reason to believe its reaction was in any way unique.

In times like these, with commentators of all political stripes bemoaning the divorce rate and speaking of out-of-wedlock birth rates with alarm, and when gays are fighting for the right to marry and join the nation's armed forces, as opposed to pursuing lives of sexual abandon, it is the studiously old-fashioned Ernest with whom we naturally sympathize, not the egotistical and emotionally frivolous Bright Young Things, no matter how glamorous and sophisticated they may seem. Here, an inverted adaptation of Marx's observation about the repetition of history makes sense: What's intended as farce winds up as tragedy.

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Learning from Our Mistakes

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Much examination has been done of late on the strategic missteps taken by Equality California and others opposing anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives. For example, statistician and political analyst Nate Silver writes:

When gay marriage is polled, it is almost always framed as a positive right, as in: "should the government permit Adam and Steve to get married?".... But there is a different way to frame the question that is no less fair, and flips the issue on its head. Namely: "should the government be allowed to prohibit Adam and Steve from getting married?" ... And it turns out that if you frame a polling question in this particular way...you get a very different set of responses. Take a look at what happens:

When USA Today asks whether gay marriage is a private decision, or rather whether government has the right to pass laws which regulate it, 63 percent say it's a private decision. This contrasts significantly with all other polling on gay marriage. The highest level of support gay marriage has received in the more traditional, positive-rights framing is 49 percent....

[A]dvocates for same-sex marriage can do a better job of framing their argument. Generally speaking, appeals to government noninterference are fairly popular; people don't like government telling them what they do and they don't have the right to do....

Equality California was still stuck in the positive rights paradigm. Gay marriage was something given to California by the state Supreme Court in its benevolent wisdom, not an intrinsic (negative) right for which the government had a duty of noninterference.

And this week, the Washington Post's God and Government blog posted Gay Rights Groups Ignored Religion on Prop. 8, noting a report that shows:

Gay-rights groups made a major strategic error in their failed effort to stop California's Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage, by ignoring the faith community and trying to make their case purely on secular grounds....

During the Prop. 8 campaign, the report said, pro-gay religious leaders who opposed the measure were told not to use the religious language of their traditions to voice their opposition to the measure and, when they were finally encouraged to speak out as people of faith, it was too late.

I'm aware that hindsight is 20/20. But we'll see if, going forward, the strategic mistakes of the past - mistakes premised on "progressive" tropes of demanding positive rights from government and appeals to secularism - are corrected.

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Clueless

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Yesterday saw a lot of passionate rhetoric about the Obama administration's brief in the Smelt case, most of it justified.

But a reader at Andrew Sullivan's site provides some clarity that may help to expose the real problem. A DOJ career lawyer (apparently) chastises those who have been criticizing the brief for being written by a "Bush holdover." The vast majority of employees at the DOJ, as with most government entities in the U.S., are civil servants protected from the political winds that blow through the top of their organizations. In that sense, every civil servant at DOJ is a Bush (and perhaps Clinton, and perhaps Bush I) holdover.

In that correct, small criticism lies something pretty profound that I think can help us understand what most likely did happen here. It's not as benign as Andrew's correspondent says, but it's also not as diabolical or cynical as many of us originally might have thought.

The brief was almost certainly written and edited by a number of civil service lawyers, with some review by top level political appointees. Those political appointees - up to and including both Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama, himself - are the ones who are ultimately responsible for every word.

The civil service lawyers - one of whom proudly boasts of being a Mormon on his webpage - most certainly drafted the brief, and the tone of the implicitly insulting language and arguments they used was virtually invisible to them. They were required to defend a statute, and this is what they came up with.

This can explain the silently slanderous spin of the repeated reference to same-sex marriage as a "form" of marriage. This puts linguistic air quotes around "marriage," the way the Washington Times used to do. It walls off same-sex marriage from what some heterosexuals view as "real" marriage. (See how the air quotes work?)

More insidiously, the argument that DOMA is rational because it saves the government money is something no one who has thought seriously about gay equality could even remotely imagine, much less articulate. The argument reduces a claim of civil equality to one of crass financial pleading.

And, ultimately, the fundamental position of the brief, as many have noted, is that no one is being discriminated against here because, just like their heterosexual counterparts, homosexuals have every right to marry someone of the opposite sex. This is the pro forma "equality" that is laughable today to all but the most rigid anti-gay zealots.

But how could this derision not have been noticed by the President's men? First, and most obviously, I can only imagine that no lesbian or gay men ever set eyes on this brief. Perhaps I am wrong, but I honestly can't see how any self-respecting homosexual in 2009 could possibly think this brief was acceptable. While California's Attorney General Jerry Brown has had to both defend and challenge anti-gay laws, his office has the grace and simple common sense to make sure the briefs are reviewed, if not drafted in the first place, by openly gay attorneys.

There is something deeper here, though. Obama is comfortable with the cliché political rhetoric of gay equality, but this brief shows his understanding doesn't go a centimeter deeper. Or (most generously) that his Attorney General knows only the words and not the tune. To someone who understands gay equality as little more than a set of slogans and bromides, this brief might not have looked particularly offensive.

That, at least, is the most generous understanding I am willing to indulge - that the brief was written and/or edited by civil servants with an anti-gay inclination, and reviewed by political staff who know no more about gay equality than what they read on the President's website.

The ball is now in the President's court. He owes us an apology - and not one of words, but one of action. Signing a hate crimes bill won't do it. Nor will an additional imprecation to Congress to do something about DOMA. It is he who was elected President with the explicit promise that gay equality would be on his agenda. What Presidents do is lead, and after this anything less than the kind of leadership he shows on other issues will be confirmation of a betrayal of those like me who voted for him in good faith.

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Barack W. Obama

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At Volokh.com, constitutional law prof (and IGF contributor) Dale Carpenter's take on Obama's DOMA brief: Except for the odd flourish or two, it could have come straight from the mouth of the Bush Administration. Read it here...and weep.

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Barack Obama Demonstrates His Committment to Gay Rights

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There are three things worth saying about President Barak Obama's Motion to Dismiss in the case of Smelt and Hammer v. United States:

(1) It is gratuitously insulting to lesbians and gay men, referring (unnecessarily) to same-sex marriage as a "form" of marriage, approving of congressional comparisons between same-sex marriages and loving relationships between siblings, or grandparents and grandchildren, and arguing (with a straight face, I can only assume) that discrimination against same-sex couples is rational because it saves the federal government money. There are some respectable arguments in this motion, and this kind of disrespect is offensive.

(2) It argues that the couple don't have standing to sue because they have not "applied for" federal benefits. While there are some federal benefits that people do, in fact, need to apply for, no heterosexual couple applies for the vast majority of federal benefits like joint income tax returns - they just rest in the knowledge that they will be there when and if they need them.

(3) Most notably, we should all beware: Premature cases ruling against us can do harm long after the original has faded from memory. The motion cites specifically to a case from 35 years ago, Baker v. Nelson, in which the Minnesota Supreme Court waved off in fourteen short paragraphs any claim that same-sex couples might have a right to marry one another, and which the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed for want of a substantial federal question. This well-intentioned case from back when the 70s were in their infancy is still being used against us (it even made an appearance in California's first same-sex marriage case, Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco). What may not have seemed like much of a question then has certainly gained some substance over time, but the damage from that case lingers and stings to this day.

UPDATE: This only makes the DOJ approving of this brief look worse. Good lord.

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Making the Case (to the Right)

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Maura Flynn makes The Republican Case for Gay Marriage. She writes:

As a nation we're at a crossroads, no question. Our banking industry scrambles to escape quasi-nationalization, our auto industry is in the process of being nationalized, and we have instituted, of all things, a Car Czar (note: it took Russia roughly 300 years to stack up so many czars). If that isn't bad enough, nationalized health care is on the table again.

So as the Republic devolves and those with the means contemplate hightailing it to the Caymans, it's probably time to ask ourselves what it is to be "conservative."

One need only read the comments on this site to know that there are two fundamental schools of thought here. Some of us believe that to be conservative is to defend freedom, preserve individual liberty, and keep government small. Others believe that being conservative is about electing a government that will defend and enforce "traditional" values.

And she adds:

The Republican Party has made a huge mistake in advocating a kind of Cafeteria Constitutionalism. (I'll take some guns, no helmet laws, please, a free market, and...yuck, hold the gay marriage!). One can't legitimately invoke the Constitution to oppose federally mandated sex education, and then use the federal government to impose school prayer. Leave that fair-weather-federalism to the Left.

This is the type of argument a movement seeking legal equality for gay people ought to be making. But, of course, it's something the LGBT Democratic Party fundraisers at the Human Rights Campaign have decided isn't worth any effort.

More. Of course, maybe HRC should focus first on defending gay legal equality to the Great Liberal President to whom they pledged unconditional LBGT support during the election. From AMERICAblog: Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.

Not working to build up support on the right is what has allowed the left to walk all over us. Eggs and baskets, boys and girls. Eggs and baskets.

More. LGBT myopia: We don't need Dick Cheney's support. LGBT progressives are confused: how would achieving marriage equality with Republican support serve the Democratic Party?

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2010 or Bust

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Dale Carpenter makes an excellent case for California to wait before trying to repeal Prop. 8. I'm still wrestling with this, myself, and think he makes a very strong argument. I'd even add a point he understates. The Supreme Court was quite clear that the effect of Prop. 8 was to constitutionalize the word "marriage," and nothing else. For constitutional purposes, same-sex couples in California are and must be treated equally to opposite-sex couples, except they can't - constitutionally - be called "married." As I've previously noted, that is a sophomoric use of a state constitution, and will have little, if any effect in the broader culture, where it's just easier to call same-sex couples married - including, of course, the 18,000 who actually are married. Compared to couples in states that don't have constitutional protection for their substantive equality, California same-sex couples don't have it so bad, with the notable exception of being denied every right under federal law - something California voters can do nothing in state law to change.

But there are very potent arguments in favor of 2010. Dale mentions money, and I think he's right that the $80+ million raised on both sides for Prop. 8 could be the future baseline. But maybe not. If the right didn't win an entirely Pyrrhic victory with Prop. 8, it was certainly a puny one, particularly in light of the 18,000 married couples who will be strolling our grocery store aisles and going to school soccer games in coming years. The primary reason Prop. 8 was able to succeed was because its political proponents were savvy enough to realize that the only victory they could deliver was a superficial one. The decision at the outset to leave domestic partnership alone was a strategic concession that acknowledged the base reality in California: same-sex couples are part of our cultural fabric now.

After spending $40 million with no more than that to show for it, I can certainly see the right finding greater value in spending its money on some other state. California already has more same-sex married couples in it than any other state and it's illegal here. Given those 18,000 couples, plus our domestic partner law going forward, is a fight to hold off the marginal differential really worth the right's time and resources? They could get real discrimination in some other state for a fraction of the cost.

Dale makes a good point about our side's failures in the Prop. 8 debate, but the Meet in the Middle rally in Fresno last month was an extremely strong sign that we have learned from our mistakes. This effort, along with some fine new television ads - outside the framework of any pending election - is exactly the sort of work we need to do to secure long-term gains in the general population. Trying to move Fresno closer to the support side is the best evidence I've seen that our more left-leaning leaders are getting the message that they need help talking to people who don't support gay rights for leftist reasons. Heck, even acknowledging that there are non-leftist reasons to support gay equality is a huge step forward for us.

While Dale may be right in general that 2010 will be a better year for Republicans than 2008, I'm not at all convinced that will be true in California. The collapse of California's Republican party, and its almost complete insulation from moderates, is more advanced here than in the rest of the nation, and their alienation of pro-gay voters is more deeply entrenched than non-Californians may realize. At least so far, I don't see much of a GOP resurgence here, and if our Republicans are pressed into yet another gay battle they are unequipped to deal with, it will only help to show Californians how out of touch these folks are. Remember, our GOP has, to this day, never officially even accepted domestic partnership rights.

I would certainly be content to wait until 2012, but I can see a good case for 2010 as well. Either way, I am so amazingly gratified to know that the only question for us is when, not if we'll have full marriage for all same-sex couples in California.

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