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When Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson was invited to deliver the invocation at the inaugural kickoff event, I expected some conservative evangelicals to complain. And they did.

Forget the fact that Robinson's invitation seemed like a token gesture after the controversial choice of evangelical pastor (and Prop-8 supporter) Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation-a far more prominent platform.

Forget the fact that Warren himself praised the choice of the openly gay bishop as demonstrating the new president's "genuine commitment to bringing all Americans of goodwill together in search of common ground."

Indeed, for the moment, forget common ground. As one right-wing blogger put it, a good evangelical doesn't seek common ground with the "Bishop of Sodom."

And so they complained. Not only about Obama's choice of Robinson, but about the prayer itself.

What grieved them so? Was it the prayer's failure to mention Jesus? Its lack of scriptural references? Its line about blessing the nation with anger-"anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people"?

Yes, yes, and yes.

But those were not the parts that worried the evangelicals who contacted me a few days ago. They were concerned that Robinson's prayer expressed a theme that they "have been trying to warn people about for some time now," and they wanted my comment.

What is this worrisome theme? What sinister agenda had the "Bishop of Sodom" expressed in his prayer, wittingly or unwittingly?

It turns out that the troubling line was this: "Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences."

Puzzled? The line strikes most of us as innocuous, or even benign. "Genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences"-who can argue with that?

But that's not the part that bothered them. They were worried about "freedom from mere tolerance."

We will not appreciate the right-wing mindset-or for that matter, the culture wars-until we understand why that sentiment scares our opponents.

When Robinson says "Bless us with freedom mere tolerance," our opponents hear "It is not enough for you to tolerate us. You ought to embrace us. You ought to approve of who we are, which can't be easily teased apart from what we do. After all, our relationships are a deep and important fact about our lives-just like yours are. So what we are asking is for you to give up your deep conviction that these relationships are sinful and instead affirm them as good."

That is in fact precisely what we are (or should be) asking for, and precisely what Bishop Robinson is praying for.

No, we don't seek such affirmation because we need our opponents' validation. Rather, we seek it because it reflects the truth: our relationships are just as good as theirs.

We seek it for another reason as well, one that frightens them even more. Statistically speaking, some of their kids will turn out gay. I want those kids to know that there's nothing wrong with them. I want them to be able, insofar as possible, to count on their parents for affirmation and support.

And that's where the culture war really is a zero-sum game, and "common ground" is impossible without dramatic concession: we want their kids to believe something that is diametrically opposed to what they want them to believe. There's no point in sugarcoating that conflict.

If I were religious, I might pray over it, as Warren and Robinson do-although when it comes down to specifics, it seems they are praying for very different things.

Or are they? One need not be a relativist to recognize that we all have an imperfect grasp of the truth, a truth that we nevertheless seek. When we find it-or at least, firmly believe that we have-we don't want it to be merely "tolerated."

That's as true of Rick Warren as it is of Gene Robinson.

As I pointed out to my evangelical caller, I'm sure that he wants me, a skeptic, to move beyond "mere tolerance" of Christianity to embrace Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.

No one who values truth wants it to be merely tolerated. We "tolerate" nuisances; we embrace truth.

That doesn't mean that we believe that truth ought to be forced upon people, as if that were even possible. And this is where I think our opponents' fears, while palpable, are ultimately unfounded.

We want them to move from mere tolerance to embracing the truth. They want us to do the same-although they see the truth quite differently. We will attempt to persuade each other.

But we cannot force truth-not by legislation, not by court decisions, and certainly, not by prayer.

Barely two weeks before the November 4 election, the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family posted a long "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," purporting to describe changes wrought by a President Obama, should he be elected-what a conservative Christian would call a "worst-case scenario."

As with many worst-case scenarios, the Letter projects some plausible events and then extrapolates trends from them, reaching far into the realm of fantasy. The Letter necessarily ignores political and popular resistance to any such changes and the inevitable compromises necessary to bring about the changes.

But the Letter is useful as a compendium of issues the Religious Right is focused on, from maintaining Christian special privileges to opposing moves toward gay and lesbian equality, from opposing sex education, birth control and abortion to outlawing pornography. Surprisingly, there is little about such "family" issues as easy divorce and domestic violence.

The Letter begins by implausibly postulating a sea change on the Supreme Court. Not only do liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens retire and are replaced by "ACLU-oriented" liberals. But then Justice Anthony Kennedy and shortly thereafter Justice Antonin Scalia retire, allowing Obama to create a solid 6-3 liberal majority on the court. This supposedly removes any Supreme Court opposition to the changes that follow.

But this all assumes that Obama would not take into account possible congressional opposition to far-left justices and appoint more moderate liberals. It also implausibly assumes for many of the changes that "ACLU-oriented" liberals run roughshod over First Amendment protections for speech and religious observance.

According to the Letter, same-sex marriage was determined to be a constitutional shortly after Scalia and Kennedy's departure. But not only has marriage always been a state matter, it is unlikely that the court would move on something so controversial until there is much greater popular support for the decision and (as with its sodomy decision) a significant majority of states have allowed gay marriage.

Shortly thereafter the court ruled that the Boy Scouts had to allow gay Scoutmasters, which led the Boy Scouts to disband rather than allow gay Scout leaders to sleep in the same tents with young Scouts. We see here openly expressed the religious conservative fears about gay child molestation and recruitment-or at least the Letter's willingness to play to those fears. It is their obsession, their idée fixe.

Schools were required to include instruction about varieties of sexual and gender expression beginning in first grade. This led to the resignation or firing of thousands of evangelical teachers who refused to teach about something they regarded as morally wrong. Here the idea is not-so-subtly insinuated that learning about something makes children find it attractive and want to try it, another notion dear to the anti-gay propagandists.

Catholic and evangelical adoption agencies were required to stop discriminating against same-sex couples as adopters, leading many of those agencies to close rather than place children with "immoral" parents. Here the obsession is with the canard that role models influence children's sexual orientation, the third great anti-gay myth. The Letter cites no evidence to support its implications.

President Obama himself reversed the exclusion of openly gay people from the military. But this is absurd. The Letter writer seems unaware that the exclusion of open gays is a law passed by Congress and would have to be repealed by Congress. In fact, the Obama administration plans to work for this, but not in the near term.

There is much more anti-gay material in this long pre-election Letter-sections opposing the outlawing of anti-gay hate speech including religious speech in churches quoting the bible, the outlawing of discrimination against lesbians for artificial insemination services, the requirement that churches allow gay couples to use their facilities for weddings, the loss of licenses by counselors who refuse positive counseling for gay and lesbian couples, etc.

There are other issues too, dealing with removal of restrictions on abortion and pornography, banning the church use of public (government) school facilities, and removal of the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, etc. But the lead part of the Letter and more than one-third of the items relate to homosexuality and homosexuals.

(Fans of the Christian numerological tradition will note that the first 12 items (counting the unnumbered same-sex marriage item) and the 33rd paragraph all deal with homosexuals. Both numbers are important for certain Christians.)

Why are our opponents so obsessed with "butt sex"?

I've personally pondered this question more times than is probably healthy. It occurred to me a few weeks ago when a poster on a conservative blog complained that gays "expect us to approve of butt sex and call it marriage."

Really?

Then last week I was reading an essay by the philosopher Michael Levin. After denying that homosexuality is immoral, he goes on to describe it as "disgusting, nauseating, closely connected with fecal matter. One need not show that anal intercourse is immoral to be warranted in wanting to be as far away from it as possible."

I think I would have liked "immoral" better.

Then, yesterday, I received an e-mail from a 15-year-old living in a small UK village. He's thinking about coming out to his "mum and dad," so he asked them what they thought about homosexuality. They told him, in no uncertain terms, that it was "wrong, unnatural, and disgusting." He continued,

"But one major point they kept pointing out was... ummm... well they said it was gross how a man would stick his... yeah up another guys... ummm... yeah. And they said it's where they sorta... yeah I ain't going into much detail….But what I really want to know is how would you respond to someone who thinks like that?"

I replied, in part, "In the abstract, of course it's weird (and from some perspectives, gross) to think of a man sticking his penis up another man's bum. But isn't all sex weird in the abstract? Sticking a penis in a vagina, which bleeds once a month? Sucking on a penis, something both straight women and gay men do? Pressing your mouth-which you use for eating-against another person's mouth, and touching tongues, and exchanging saliva (i.e. kissing)? Weird! Gross! (In the abstract, anyway.)"

Sex makes no sense in the abstract. But then you have urges, and you eventually act on them, and what once seemed weird and gross becomes…wow.

Our opponents recognize this in their own lives, but they can't envision it elsewhere. It's a profound failure of moral imagination-which is essential for empathy, which is at the foundation of the Golden Rule.

How can one "love thy neighbor as thyself" without any real effort to understand thy neighbor?

Our opponents contemplate our lives, our love, our longing, and what do they see? "Butt sex." Such obtuseness is depressing.

Of course, not all gays engage in "butt sex"-some of us never do-and not only gays engage in "butt sex."

Of course, most of what we do in bed is exactly the same as most of what they do in bed: cuddling and touching and caressing and kissing and sucking and rubbing and so on. (Not to mention sleeping, which when shared regularly can be beautifully intimate as well.)

What we do is the same not just in terms of formal acts. It's the same in terms of being weird, and silly, and messy, and sublime.

Yes, Virginia, we make funny faces when we come, too.

It's always easier to criticize the weirdness in others than to confront the weirdness in the mirror. (Perhaps that's why mirrors in the bedroom are thought to be kinky.)

Our opponents take anxiety about sex-a natural and virtually universal human phenomenon-and wield it as a weapon against us. Shame on them.

As for the marriage-equality fight, what do you say to someone who thinks that we expect her "to approve of butt sex and call it marriage"?

Thankfully, another poster responded to that one more effectively than I ever could.

The respondent described herself as a lifelong Christian, daughter of a conservative minister, and "personally against gay marriage but passionate about gay civil rights." (This description will strike some as paradoxical, but bravo to her for understanding the difference between personal beliefs and public policy.)

She then warmly depicts a gay couple she knows who have adopted two special-needs children. The children, she writes, "RADIATE happiness at each other, their parents, and the people around them. Somehow 'butt sex' doesn't seem to neatly contain all the emotions, commitment, and wondrous devotion that their parents' relationship has provided them with."

She concludes by chiding her fellow Christian, "Please think carefully before you speak."

Amen to that.

When the rumor first surfaced that President-elect Barack Obama's transition team was strongly considering union activist Mary Beth Maxwell for secretary of Labor, gay ears perked up. Gay news outlets across the country and around the world covered the story with marked interest. Gay blogs covered every hint and rumor about the selection process. The Human Rights Campaign, which had already endorsed Rep. Linda Sanchez for the job, announced that it would simultaneously endorse Maxwell. Why such fascination? Maxwell, you see, is a lesbian, which is apparently a very important qualification when it comes to the study of ergonomics, implementation of the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, and compliance with the Office of Labor-Management Standards.

My reaction to the news that Maxwell was under serious consideration was less enthusiastic. Whereas the gay press focused almost entirely on Maxwell's attraction to women, the mainstream media was more interested in her ardent support for a deceptively titled bill called the Employee Free Choice Act. Under current labor law, if a union wishes to organize a workplace, it must first win the consent of a simple majority of workers who vote the same way the rest of Americans do biennially on the first Tuesday of November - by secret ballot.

The Employee Free Choice Act would change this. Instead, all a union would need to secure the right of representation is collect cards signed by a bare majority of employees. Armed with a list of workers' names, union organizers would know who has - and who has not - publicly indicated their support for the union. Such a system clearly lends itself to abuse, as union bosses can pressure and intimidate workers into supporting unionization. Maxwell, a longtime union activist, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the measure.

That Maxwell is sexually attracted to women is all well and good, but her support for the Employee Free Choice Act ought to be more significant. And while it would be nice to have an openly gay cabinet secretary, I'd rather have a straight one who doesn't support this legislation - barring that, anyone who isn't as zealous a proponent of it as Maxwell. Should this opposition to the appointment of an openly gay person - opposition based not a whit on said person's sexuality but rather my sincere beliefs about the damage she could inflict upon the nation's economy - make me a pariah among gays?

Ultimately, Obama passed over Maxwell in favor of Rep. Hilda Solis, who is no less devoted to the Employee Free Choice Act. But in the weeks since this decision was made, gays have grown more vocal in their demand that someone, anyone, gay get a high-level cabinet appointment.

Attention soon turned to Fred Hochberg, a gay man who served in the Small Business Administration under President Clinton, whom gay activists favored for Commerce secretary after the scandal-plagued Bill Richardson withdrew himself from consideration.

"We're not pushing his name just because he's gay," insisted Phil Sousa, the creator of the website EqualRep, which is pressuring the Obama administration into appointing the first openly gay cabinet secretary. "We're pushing his name because he's highly qualified and the fact that he's openly gay is kind of icing on the cake there."

In other words, they're pushing Hochberg because he's gay. Were he not, they wouldn't be pushing him.

While it's important to have openly gay public figures as advocates for equality, role models for the young, and living proof that we are not the depraved perverts our adversaries portray us as, the near-singular focus on obtaining an openly gay cabinet nominee comes at the expense of more important gay rights causes. It essentializes gay people down to their sexual preference.

Inaugurated in 1993 after the nostrums of identity politics had successfully pervaded the media, universities, and popular culture, Bill Clinton was the first president to appoint cabinet secretaries under the rubric of a racial and gender spoils system. Soon after his election, for instance, it was revealed that Clinton would consider only women for the job of attorney general. This poisoned the opening months of his presidency, as insufficient vetting resulted in the scotching of several nominees over a variety of damaging revelations.

It's understandable that gay activists would want openly gay people in high levels of government, and I stand with them. But there's something a bit pathetic in the way gay organizations and the gay media have fixated on the appointment of openly gay individuals. By focusing so heavily on the sexual orientations of the people under consideration, it seems like we're fighting for scraps off the table of the incoming Obama administration. We're looking for a singular trophy when we ought to be fighting for a turkey in every pot, and it reeks of desperation.

According to a recent Advocate.com report by Kerry Eleveld, the leaders of the nation's major gay organizations spent the "bulk of a two-hour meeting" with transition officials last month pressing for the appointment of an openly gay cabinet secretary. Wouldn't their time have been better spent talking about how to pass pro-gay legislation in the upcoming congressional term?

While a cabinet appointment would be a breakthrough, it's hardly the impressive accomplishment that gay groups are portraying it as. Openly gay elected officials like Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin had to fight their way up the congressional food chain to earn national prominence; they didn't get their jobs thanks to a well-moneyed gay lobby pressuring for their selection.

Indeed, a cabinet appointment is not always a sign of merit; it's often as much, if not more, a result of political favors, a desire to please an important political constituency or a mixture of the two.

But at this point, thanks to the blatant way gay rights groups have gone about campaigning for it, such a selection would be perceived as cynical tokenism. And given all the public pressure directed at Obama to appoint a gay person to a high-profile job, the appointee would automatically be viewed as the recipient of preferential treatment. With so much attention devoted to that appointee's sexuality - as opposed to their actual qualifications - the first openly gay cabinet secretary would be robbed of their individuality, and their accomplishments in office would come second to their sexual orientation.

Like everyone else, gays should be judged by their abilities. This quest for homosexual affirmative action is a throwback to the mau-mauing of women's and ethnic groups during the Clinton administration. As with racial and gender preferences, when important positions are "set aside" for a certain class rather than the most qualified individuals, everyone loses out, not least of which the intended beneficiaries. The obsessive focus on openly gay cabinet appointees risks further ghettoization of gays, as we are compelled to "support" whatever gay figure is foisted upon us by gay organizations irrespective of whether or not we agree with that person's political views.

Gay people have every right to lobby the government to address their concerns. But by demanding that Obama prioritize sexual orientation in the hiring of employees, we diminish ourselves, not just collectively but as individuals.

In terms of gay-rights progress, brace yourself for a difficult year.

This is not because things are getting worse. It's because the national conversation on gay-rights issues is getting harder.

One reason is that, as cliche as it sounds, we are more polarized than ever. Gone are the days when House Speaker Tip O' Neill could lambaste President Reagan by day and play cards with him after 6 p.m.

It has become too easy to surround oneself solely with like-minded people. (The internet is one key factor.) The result is a bunch of echo chambers, where opponents seem not just wrong, but borderline-insane.

The second reason is that the gay community's specific goals have shifted. We are no longer asking merely to be left alone, as when we were fighting sodomy laws and police harassment. Our central political goal, for better or for worse, has become marriage.

Marriage is not merely a private contract between two individuals. It is also an agreement between those individuals and the larger community. It requires, both legally and socially, that community's support. And so the old "leave me alone" script no longer quite works.

A third reason the conversation is getting harder is that the gay community is at a crossroads regarding how we treat our opponents.

On the one hand we talk about reaching out, promoting dialogue, emphasizing common ground. On the other hand we are quick to label our opponents as hate-filled bigots.

This combination obviously won't work. A bigot is someone whose views, virtually by definition, are beyond the pale of polite discussion.

One sees this contrast in the fracas over Obama's choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

Compared to most evangelical pastors, Warren is a moderate, who focuses on common-ground issues such as poverty over the usual culture-war stuff.

But Warren supported Prop. 8, the California initiative that stripped marriage rights from gays and lesbians. (He has since suggested some possible support for civil unions.)

Obama's camp is taking the "big tent" approach, acknowledging differences but emphasizing shared values. In a similar vein, Melissa Etheridge has opened a dialogue with Warren.

Most gay-rights leaders, by contrast, have decried Obama's choice of Warren. As one friend put it, "it's like inviting a segregationist to lead the invocation-I don't care what other good things the guy has done."

And there's the rub: Warren does indeed espouse a "separate but equal" legal status for gays and lesbians (at best). Should we treat him the way we treat segregationists?

Before answering, remember that the majority of Californians, and a larger majority of the rest of the country, hold the same position as Warren on marriage. So does Obama himself (though he did oppose Prop. 8).

So in asking whether inviting Warren to lead the invocation is akin to inviting a segregationist to do so, we are also asking whether the vast majority of Americans are akin to segregationists.

It's a painful question to confront. And the only fair answer is "yes and no."

On the merits, yes. For practical purposes, no.

From where I stand, the arguments against marriage equality look about as bad as the arguments for segregation. They commit the same fallacies; they hide behind the same (selective reading of) scripture; they are often motivated by the same fears.

But I'm mindful of the fact that "from where I stand" includes decades of hindsight regarding segregation. The nation isn't there yet on gay equality.

Today, nearly everyone finds the following sentiments repugnant:

"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

The segregationist who wrote that? Abraham Lincoln.

It is easy now to paint all segregationists as hatemongers, waving pitchforks and frothing at the mouth. Easy, but quite wrong.

The fact is that most segregationists were people not unlike, say, my grandmothers, both of whom were wonderful, loving, decent human beings, and both of whom-much to my embarrassment-opposed interracial marriage.

Their reasons had to do with tradition and the well-being of children. Sound familiar?

My grandmothers were not hatemongers. They were products of their time. So was Lincoln, so is Rick Warren, and so are you and I, more or less.

I don't mean for a moment to let Rick Warren off the hook. He ought to know better. Maybe someday he will.

In the meantime, prepare yourself for a challenging 2009.