Try a Little Learning

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Digesting the bitter Prop 8 news, I'm disappointed and sad to have lost gay marriage in California. The adoption of a constitutional ban there has set back the cause by years. What's more frustrating, though, is what I'm hearing from people on our side. "This just shows why civil rights shouldn't be put up for a vote." Or: "We lost this one, but there are other courts to try." To me this translates as: "We're determined not to learn from defeat."

Not just one defeat. On gay marriage, we're now zero for 30 on state constitutional bans. Think about that. Has any other political movement in the history of the United States compiled such an unblemished record of total electoral annihilation? An introspective movement should be doing some fundamental rethinking at this point.

My suggestion: Rethink, first, the wisdom of mindlessly pushing lawsuits through the courts without adequately preparing the public. The result is gay marriage in two states-one of which, Connecticut, would soon have had it anyway-at the cost of a backlash which has made the climb much steeper in dozens of other states, and which, in some states, has banned even civil unions. The California debacle is particularly stinging. We already had civil unions there, and we were only one Democratic governor away from seeing those converted legislatively, hence less controversially, to marriages. First rule of politics: if you're winning anyway, don't kick it away.

Rethink, second, the strategy of telling the public that we're entitled to marriage by right and that anyone who disagrees is a discriminator or, by implication, a bigot. Some portion of the public, let's call it a third, agrees with that proposition, but a third isn't enough. As Dale Carpenter points out, another, let's say, third loaths homosexuality, but they're not winnable. The key is the middle group, people who oppose anti-gay discrimination but see gender as part of the definition of marriage, not as a discriminatory detail. We're going to have to persuade these people that gay marriage is a good idea. We're going to have to talk about gay marriage instead of changing the subject to discrimination. Bludgeoning them with civil-rights rhetoric isn't going to work. Not if it failed in the country's bluest state in a bright-blue year.

The gay marriage issue is not going to be decided over the heads of the American people, and no amount of comparing it to Brown vs. Board of Education or any other dubiously relevant precedent will change that. Too many gay heads are too strategically locked into a litigation-based mindset that has become counterproductive. Too many people forget that Martin Luther King was a persuader, not a litigator, and that the real breakthroughs came through Congress, not courts.

Addendum: A useful emendation here. In a perverse way, it cheers me up a bit to know that, pre-Prop 8, California was not as close to SSM as I thought.

More: A silver lining in Arizona, courtesy of commenter Throbert...

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Marriage Bans Win in Florida, Arizona; Marriage Rolled Back in California

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Updated Nov. 7

The get out the vote for Obama campaign, to which the LGBT beltway bandits contributed mightily, achieved its goal of bringing out record numbers of black and Hispanic voters, who heavily supported the anti-gay marriage amendments that will constitutionally bar same-sex marriages in Florida and Arizona (and, even worse, roll back marriage equality in a state where it now exists, California. Also, Arkansas voters banned gay couples from adopting children.

From Reuters, California Stops Gay Marriage Amid Obama Victory. That state's anti-gay marriage Prop 8 passed with exit polls showing 51% of whites opposing the amendment but 70% of African-Americans supporting it, and 75% of African-American women voting to ban our marriages. But what price is losing marriage equality when we now have the light bearer to reign over us?

In early October, we posted one volunteer's warning cry:

"Being behind in the polls wasn't inevitable-we were ahead for a long time-but now...their side has out fund-raised us by $10 million. ...

"Gays have a third choice in 2008; say to hell with the presidential election-Obama is no savior for the gays, and McCain no threat-and get 100% behind the No on 8 campaign. But no-our national organizations had to pretend the presidential election mattered for us this year, and for that, we might just all pay dearly, for a long time to come.

Then, on the eve of the election, Obama reiterated that " 'marriage is between a man and a woman." Yes, he said he was against Prop 8 and amending state constitutions, but everything else he said could have been used in a pro-Prop 8 ad. [update: And it was! A pro-prop 8 robocall used Obama's anti-gay marriage remarks.] The message wasn't lost on the faithful. And, of course, Obama had previously explained that only male-female marriage is a divinely ordained sacred union to be enshrined by law.

Don't expect Obama or the Democratic congress to take steps to modify much less revoke the odious Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. The LGBT Obamist cadres will be explaining shortly that such a move wouldn't be expedient, after all, in terms of the greater goal of enacting their sweepingly "progressive" redistributionist agenda.

More. McCain received an historic 27% of the self-identified gay vote, according to CNN's exit poll. But to the LGBT media, we're virtually invisible. And as far as the beltway bandits at Human Rights Campaign are concerned, we don't exist.

But what if the money HRC raised to get out the vote for Obama and help secure their own sinecures in the Obama bureaucracies had gone to fighting these initiatives instead?

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The Forthcoming Rude Awakening

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Let the celebrations begin. And through inauguration and the "first 100 days" enthusiasm will be high, and LGBT Democratic activists will tell us that a new dawn is upon us, led by the one for whom we have been waiting and his chosen party. They will be insufferable.

But sometime early in 2009, the country will come to some inconvenient truths, as will gay voters. Obama has pledged to introduce legislation that attempts to provide tax credits to all earning less than $250,000 while simultaneously using the federal troth to send checks to those who don't pay income taxes, while also providing subsidized health care and college tuition, plus trillions more in new pork-barrel spending to fulfill the promises Obama has made unto the masses.

The struggling economy won't react well to raising capital gains and dividends taxes as a matter of "fairness," and hugely increasing income and social security taxes on "the rich," along with the many regulatory overreach steps that the Democrats will quickly pass. Add to the mix anti-trade protectionism, the rapid elimination of secret ballots for union elections, and unleashing the trial lawyers to bring suit against corporate America without even modest restraints (the new "pay equity" act will allow the plaintiffs' bar to reach back over 20 years to find discrimination and sue sue sue). Growth will stagnate, unemployment will rise, incomes will fall, and Obama and congressional Democrats will only be able to blame the Bush administration for so long, though they will try mightily.

On foreign policy, let's take Joe Biden at his word and expect the worst.

On the LGBT front, some Obama loyalists at the Human Rights Campaign and elsewhere will be awarded mid-level positions in Washington's alphabet bureaucracies. They will use these posts to defend Obama from critiques that he is not delivering on his promises to the LGBT community, much as Clinton's LGBT appointments defended his support of the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

There will be quick passage of a "hate crimes" bill federalizing prosecution of crimes committed with animus against select Democratic-voting constituencies. There will be the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which even John McCain said he was willing to consider signing. It will not, however, include a "GENDA" component that prohibits employers from discriminating against crossdressers -- and that will split LGBT activists who have made the "T" a litmus test for progressivism (think National Gay & Lesbian Task Force) from the LGBT Obamist apologists (think Human Rights Campaign). It won't be pretty. And if the intramural fighting gets ugly enough, there won't be any ENDA at all.

Don't look for action on the military gay ban, either. Obama has said (though the LGBT press passed over it) that he's going to go slow and rely on the military's advice here. Gen. Colin Powell, newly minted Obamist and one of the fathers (with former Sen. Sam Nunn) of "don't ask, don't tell" (i.e., "lie and hide") will provide him with cover.

The Democrats will control all the reins for two years. As their mask of moderation falls away and their contradictory promises work out in favor of traditional big government, big labor, anti-growth statism, support will wither. They will loss Congress in 2010.

GOP at the Crossroads

The Republican party has a choice. If John McCain turns out to be the last GOP presidential nominee willing to forsake gay bashing and oppose amending the U.S. Constitution to ban marriage for committed, loving same-sex couples, then the party will tread backwards. And if our only choice in the years to come is between a redistributionist regulatory state and reactionary social conservatism, America's future will be bleak.

(I've bumped up into a new post my observations on the win for state marriage bans that had been here.)

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Five Dumb Ideas about Morality

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On the eve of the election, I am pleased that my fellow Democrats have finally learned not to concede "moral values" language to the other side.

In past elections, we heard a lot about "values voters"-a code-term for right-wingers on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Senator Obama, among his many talents, has made the case that we should all be "values voters;" that foreign, economic, and environmental policy are moral issues; and that compassion, equality, and justice are values, too.

Still, my fellow liberals often have a hard time with the language of morals-whether because of an admirable humility, a lamentable wishy-washiness, or both.

That aversion results in a number of common but dumb claims about morality and ethics. (Like most philosophers, I use the terms interchangeably-there is no "standard" distinction.) Here's my take on these claims:

(1) "Morality is a private matter." To put it bluntly, this claim is nonsense of the highest order. Morality is about how we treat one another. It's about what we as a society embrace, what we merely tolerate, and what we absolutely forbid.

While morality respects certain private spheres-and while some moral decisions are best left to those most intimately affected by them-morality is generally quite the opposite of a "private" matter.

(2) "You shouldn't judge other people." This claim is not only false, it's self-defeating. (If you shouldn't judge other people, then why are you telling me what to do?)

The reason this claim sounds remotely plausible is because of a slight ambiguity in what it means to "judge other people." Should you go around wagging your finger in people's faces? Of course not. No one likes a know-it-all, and pompous moralizing is counterproductive.

But it doesn't follow that we shouldn't make any moral judgments about other people's behavior. Doing so is often the best way to figure out what traits to emulate and what mistakes to avoid.

(3) "I don't need anyone's moral approval." If this claim means that individuals don't need the moral approval of any other given individual, then fine: there will always be those whose moralizing is ill-informed, sloppy or insensitive-and thus best avoided. But to deny that we need the moral approval of anyone at all overlooks morality's crucial social role.

Morality, unlike law, does not have formal enforcement procedures: police and courts and the like. It relies instead on social pressure-encouraging glances and raised eyebrows, nudges and winks, inclusion and ostracism. (Interestingly, some right-wing bloggers have reacted to my recent work by worrying about "court-enforced moral approval"-as if that concept made any sense.)

Moral pressure can help us be our best selves. But in order for it to work, we need to take other people's moral opinions seriously most of the time. Just as unreasonable or unenforceable laws erode our confidence in law itself (think Prohibition), widespread dismissal of others' moral views erodes morality's social function.

(4) "Morality is just a matter of opinion." Whether boxers are preferable to briefs is "just" a matter of opinion. Whether coffee tastes better with cream and sugar is "just" a matter of opinion. To call our moral values "just" a matter of opinion, by contrast, is to ignore their social and personal significance.

The problem here is that people start with a legitimate distinction between facts and values-in other words, between descriptions of the world and normative judgments about it. Unfortunately, the fact/value distinction morphs into the much fuzzier fact/opinion distinction, which then morphs into the fact/ "mere" opinion distinction-suggesting that values are unimportant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

(5) "There's no point in arguing about morality." Moral problems are practical problems: they're problems about what to do. "Agreeing to disagree" is fine when the stakes are low or when the status quo is tolerable. But when something is badly wrong in the world, we should strive to repair it. That often requires making a persuasive moral case to our neighbors.

My own experience as "The Gay Moralist" suggests that moral arguments can make a difference-which is not to say they do so instantly or easily. Sometimes they require an extended back-and-forth. Sometimes, they help us get a foot in the door so that an emotional connection can be made. But the idea that they never work is not merely defeatist, it's downright false.

In short, we should all be moralists-liberals and conservatives, religious and secular, red-staters and blue-staters-because we all need to figure out how to live together.

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A Christianist Theocrat?

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Via the New York Times:

Several gay friends and wealthy gay donors to Senator Barack Obama have asked him over the years why, as a matter of logic and fairness, he opposes same-sex marriage even though he has condemned old miscegenation laws that would have barred his black father from marrying his white mother.

The difference, Mr. Obama has told them, is religion.

As a Christian - he is a member of the United Church of Christ - Mr. Obama believes that marriage is a sacred union, a blessing from God, and one that is intended for a man and a woman exclusively.

Comments "Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds: "My guess is that the reason he's not getting more flak on this is that lots of people who'd be upset by it just don't believe him. What will they say if it turns out he's telling the truth?"

More. Or just a socialist?

Furthermore. Apparently, only the anti-gay marriage side in California is willing to run an ad featuring a (supposed) gay couple at home with their child, in What Is Marriage For? Given his clear public statements that only man-woman marriage is a sacred union, how could Obama possibly disagree with this message?

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Beyond the Beltway, Again

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GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is no supporter of gay equality, although he's not been an anti-gay demagogue, either. But a radio ad attacking McConnell, by AFSCME, the government-workers union, traffics in nasty homophobic innuendo in order to help elect his Democratic opponent.

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California’s Invisible Gays

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These days, it's pretty hard to walk the streets of a California city without seeing same-sex couples - shopping, strolling, holding hands, sometimes accompanied by children. What used to be called, self-consciously, "public displays of affection" are now merely public displays of ordinary family life. For gay folks, then, it is all the more stinging an irony that the one place where same-sex couples are invisible is in the advertising war over Proposition 8.

Proposition 8, of course, is the constitutional ballot initiative on whether to retain or reject same-sex marriage, which was legalized by the state Supreme Court in May. Given California's power to shape national trends, the stakes for both sides could not be much higher. But given the sheer size of the state's media market, TV advertising could not be much more expensive. For both sides, the premium is on common-denominator messaging that appeals to the largest possible number of swing voters while causing a minimum of political backlash.

The need to walk that tightrope helps explain why the actual subjects of next month's initiative, gay couples, were "inned" by the "No on 8" campaign's ads. (Full disclosure: I am a "No on 8" donor.) One ad, for example, features a gray-haired straight couple. "Our gay daughter and thousands of our fellow Californians will lose the right to marry," says mother Julia Thoron.

A subsequent ad, all text with voice-over narration, mentions marriage only once ("Regardless of how you feel about marriage, it's wrong to treat people differently under the law") and never uses the phrase "gay marriage" or even the word "gay." Just as oblique was a spot, released Wednesday, in which state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell reassures viewers that "Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage." A casual viewer could have come away from these ads puzzled as to exactly what right thousands of Californians might be about to lose.

Asked about the absence of gay couples, a senior "No on 8" official told KPIX-TV in San Francisco that "from all the knowledge that we have and research that we have, [those] are not the best images to move people." Children, also, were missing; showing kids with same-sex parents could too easily backfire.

The pro-Proposition 8 forces, by contrast, featured a child prominently in their TV advertising: A schoolgirl comes home with a book called "King and King" and announces, to her mother's consternation, that she learned in school that "I can marry a princess." Another ad attacks overweening judges, mocks San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for saying, "It's going to happen whether you like it or not," and goes on to claim that gay marriage could cause people to be sued for their beliefs and churches to lose their tax exemption.

Notice, again, that gay couples were missing, though for a different reason. Nowadays, swing voters are more leery of anti-gay discrimination than of same-sex couples. So the "yes" ads changed the subject, focusing on alleged (and disputed) follow-on effects of same-sex marriage rather than on the thing itself. If homosexuals can get married, look what else might happen! Arrogant judges, politicians and school bureaucrats will harass churches, torment dissenters and inappropriately sexualize education!

What might such ads show? Well, one might feature someone like my friend Brian, who married his partner, Doug, on Saturday. They already had a domestic partnership, but that could not begin to match the power of marriage, sealed before parents and friends in a ceremony in San Francisco. "It's how you say this is forever and do it publicly," Brian says. "It's very different from getting a form notarized at Mailboxes Etc."

An ad might show Brian driving Doug to the hospital and sitting at his bedside after surgery. Marriage is unique because of the high social expectations that go with it. Chief among those expectations is that spouses will do whatever is necessary to care for each other - which is valuable, because census data show that almost a third of California's gay couples have only one wage-earner, and almost a fifth have at least one disabled partner (about the same, by the way, as for straight married couples). By supporting and reinforcing the care-giving commitment, each marriage, gay no less than straight, creates social capital for the whole community.

Brian and Doug don't have kids, but a fourth of California's gay couples do, according to census data. An ad might show some of those kids watching as their parents, previously denied marriage, tie the knot. For children, no other arrangement matches the security and stability afforded by married parents, because no other arrangement confers comparable status and social support. If they could cast ballots, how many of the more than 50,000 children being raised in California's same-sex households would vote to deprive themselves of married parents?

Or an ad might feature a gay teenager celebrating his parents' 20th wedding anniversary and dreaming of his own someday. There are countless gay youths for whom the prospect of marriage will be so much more tangible if it is embraced by the nation's largest state. The breakthrough effect of same-sex marriage is not on the mature gay couples who can finally get marriage licenses, important though that is; it is the effect on generations of gay kids who will no longer grow up assuming that their love must separate them from life's most essential institution.

Keeping marriage available to gay couples in California, and giving it the blessings of a popular majority, would be a game-changer for gay culture. It would signal that the transformation from a pariah culture in the 1950s, to a promiscuity culture in the 1970s, and then to a commitment culture in the AIDS era and beyond, has taken its last and greatest step: to a culture of family.

Ellen DeGeneres, the comedian and TV personality, made an unofficial anti-Proposition 8 ad calling her marriage "the happiest day of my life." For the most part, however, you have seen and heard least about those who benefit most from gay marriage. That does not mean, however, you shouldn't think about them.

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Bait and Switch Time, Again

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In the wake of Michigan's passage of an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment, John Corvino wrote:

It was a classic bait-and-switch. When gay-rights opponents sought to amend Michigan's constitution to prohibit, not only same-sex marriage, but also "similar union[s] for any purpose," they told us that the amendment was not about taking away employment benefits. They told us that in their speeches. They told us that in their campaign literature. They told us that in their commercials.

They lied.

The initiative passed, the constitution was amended, and before the ink was dry the opponents changed their tune and demanded that municipalities and state universities revoke health-insurance benefits for same-sex domestic partners.

A similar scenario is being played out, now, in Florida. The Sunshine State's Amendment 2 appears on the state ballot as follows:

"This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized." (emphasis added)

Supporters of Amendment 2 are claiming no existing rights will be taken away:

Amendment 2 does nothing new. It merely protects something longstanding, something precious, something beautiful - natural marriage between a man and a woman.

But, as we know from Michigan, that's not what they'll be saying the day after the amendment passes. And, while unlike California, the Florida amendment requires 60 percent of the vote to enshrine anti-gay animus in the state constitution, defeating it remains an uphill battle.

Where's Obama? The Washington Blade takes note of Obama's silence on California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, and as we've pointed out, observes that:

...black support for Prop 8 could be the key to its approval. A new poll conducted by SurveyUSA shows overwhelming black support for Prop 8. Likely black voters favor it, 58-38 percent. That's a daunting and disappointing margin, especially considering black turnout is expected to be at record-breaking levels thanks to Obama's historic candidacy.

Likewise, in Florida (which, unlike California, is very much a swing state up for grabs), the Obama campaign is making registration of Caribbean-Americans and Democratic-leaning Hispanics (of which there are a growing number) a key priority. These groups are heavily anti-gay, and anti-gay marriage. Let us applaud the self-sacrifice being made by LBGT organizations, whose donations to the Democrats' "get out the vote" efforts may elect Obama, even if it means passing anti-gay state consitutional amendments.

Bait and switch, anyone?

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The Case for Obama

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My friends, I'd like you to meet someone, a true American, a great American: Jane the Plumber.

Jane, my friends, is an actual plumber, as opposed to that Joe the Plumber guy, who didn't have a plumber license and may have been related to a big financial scandal.

No, Jane is an actual plumber. Maybe she lives in Michigan. Maybe she lives in Arizona. Maybe she lives in Florida. But she is a plumber, and she is a lesbian.

Let me tell you about our friend Jane the Plumber. Jane stays up at night because her partner, Sue, has breast cancer. If the couple lives in Michigan and Jane is a plumber for a public facility, then Jane isn't allowed to share her health benefits with Sue. In May, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's constitutional amendment saying that "the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose" means that public employers can't give domestic partnership benefits.

So Sue will either need to have benefits of her own, or must look to public assistance for help.

Jane is worried about whether the law will recognize her as the parents of the two children she raised with Sue, the birth mother, if Sue should die.

If Jane lives in Mississippi or Florida, her kids are in particular danger - both states have gay adoption bans. Judges in Florida keep ruling the ban unconstitutional - the latest judge said so this past September - but the law still stands.

Jane also worries about visiting Sue in the hospital, especially if they're traveling. She's heard horror stories from friends who say that, despite the fact that they carry legal paperwork around with them at all times giving each other power of attorney, some hospitals arbitrarily forbid gay partners to stand by their partner's sick beds and make decisions for them.

Because Jane and Sue live in a state that doesn't recognize domestic partnership benefits for public employees - maybe Michigan, but perhaps also Florida, if Amendment 2 passes there in November - then Jane also won't get bereavement leave if Sue dies. She'll have to take vacation time or sick time.

Jane is also worried that Sue's parents may fight Sue's will, and take their house away. Jane and Sue were married in a United Church of Christ chapel, but their state doesn't legally recognize the marriage - and Sue's parents have said that if the state doesn't recognize them, they won't either. If Sue dies, her parents would be able to make decisions about burial and cremation in absence of a will, not her partner Jane.

Jane and Sue pay more for their home and auto insurance policies; they also pay more in taxes. Depending on the whim of the franchise owner, they may pay more to rent a car; hotels in some states can refuse them a room. In many states, an employer can fire Jane or Sue just because they're gay, or deny them a promotion. Only 12 states protect Jane and Sue from employment discrimination. Twelve.

My friends, this election matters for Jane the Plumber. It is a decision between a candidate - John McCain - who says he doesn't believe in gay adoption, and whose running mate "tolerates" gay people; and a candidate - Barack Obama - who believes that gay people should have all the civil rights of straight people, and whose running mate said he believes the rights of gays and lesbians are protected under the Constitution.

Joe the Plumber, if he really were a plumber, may have to pay more taxes on his $250,000 a year income when he buys his plumbing business, but Jane the Plumber will suffer significant harm under a McCain administration - harm that can cost her her children, her home, and her last hours with her partner.

My friends, Jane the Plumber is counting on us. She is counting on us to go to the polls on election day - and she is counting on us to vote for Obama. She has a lot at stake. Let's not let her - or ourselves - down.

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The Case for McCain

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John McCain has made it hard to vote for him. Linking Barack Obama to terrorism was odious. Choosing Sarah Palin was reckless. Still, an advocate of gay equality who's otherwise closer to McCain's views on economic and foreign policy can support him with a clear conscience. That's because the differences on gay issues - as a practical matter - are less dramatic than we've been told by the organized "GLBT movement." As the practical differences on gay issues get smaller, non-gay issues grow in salience.

You wouldn't know it by listening to gay pundits and organizations, but McCain is the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee ever. That's not just faint praise. Despite election-season pandering to the religious right, he's not one of them and they know it. He has openly gay staffers and campaign officials. He has defended his gay colleagues in public office against attacks by religious conservatives. The convention that nominated him was free of anti-gay rhetoric. Even marriage, long a crowd-pleaser, was rarely mentioned. In fact, 49 percent of the delegates to the GOP convention supported civil unions or gay marriage. And unlike Bush in 2004, McCain's campaign has not exploited homophobia.

There's much more. In a first for a Republican presidential nominee, McCain recently responded in writing to questions from the Washington Blade, DC's gay newspaper. The responses, while occasionally mealy-mouthed, were encouraging. Yet gay activists replied to the interview as if he'd called for death camps for gays.

Take the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which McCain voted against in 1996. Gay organizations' scorecards continue to say that he "opposes" ENDA. The truth is more complicated. McCain told the Blade that he now supports "non-discrimination in hiring for gay and lesbian people" and will "give careful consideration" to ENDA. Moreover, his lingering reservations about ENDA are not "anti-gay": if drafted too broadly, the law will needlessly erode religious liberty and generate frivolous and costly litigation.

Skeptics will say these are excuses for vetoing ENDA, no matter what form it takes. They may be right. But it's significant that McCain, who unlike Obama has a long record of actually working productively with the other party, also promises to consult Congress to meet these concerns. Unlike Obama, McCain could actually get around a possible GOP filibuster in the Senate to pass the bill.

Still, Obama would sign ENDA no matter how broadly drafted. A Democratic Congress wouldn't have the votes to override a McCain veto, which would at least mean a narrower bill than we'd get under Obama. So the advantage goes to Obama, but the difference is smaller than once supposed.

Obama supports a hate-crimes law covering sexual orientation. McCain would veto it largely on federalism grounds because controlling crime is primarily the responsibility of the states. Again, that's not an "anti-gay" view; indeed, protecting the states' prerogatives to decide important policy matters was the basis for McCain's and many congressional Democrats' opposition to a federal marriage amendment in 2004 and 2006. In any case, there's no evidence such laws actually deter hate crimes, so Obama is better on an issue that doesn't much matter in practice.

Then there's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which Obama opposes. As gay organizations like to remind us, McCain supported it in 1993 (as did Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress back then).

But, in another sign of a thaw ignored or belittled by gay leaders and writers, McCain told the Blade he "will have the policy reviewed." He is open to ending DADT, he said, but only if military leaders agree. So the upshot, one might think, is that Obama will end DADT while McCain will only "review" whether to end it. That's a big difference between them, you say.

Not so fast. Like McCain, Obama would need the support of military leaders to end the ban. He would then have to pressure Congress on a matter involving military policy and national security, areas of perennial Democratic political vulnerability.

Neither persuading military leaders nor wary congressional Democrats to end DADT is a given in an Obama administration. Unlike McCain, Obama has no military background and little credibility with the military brass. (If, on the other hand, McCain decided to end the ban, he would be uniquely positioned to do so, like Richard Nixon traveling to China.) Also unlike McCain, Obama has an undistinguished legislative record, which bodes ill for pressuring his own party or Republicans on the issue.

Thus, it's unlikely that DADT would be repealed in an Obama administration. I agree that it's better symbolically to have a president on record against DADT than one who's agnostic about it, but the outcome is likely to be the same: no end to DADT in the next administration.

Both men oppose gay marriage. But McCain supported the Defense of Marriage Act (along with Bill Clinton and most congressional Democrats) back in 1996, and continues to support it, while Obama opposes it. This another area in which the conventional gay-rights scorecard favors Obama.

But here we have another distinction that makes little practical difference. Repealing DOMA would be very difficult, requiring full presidential commitment and masterful legislative skills. Obama might be up to this task, but there's little evidence of it so far.

Gay pundits and leaders love to remind us that Obama opposes California's Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage. But they never mention that Obama's "opposition" has consisted of a single letter sent several months ago to a local gay Democratic group in San Francisco. No public statements. No TV or radio ads. McCain supports Prop 8, but never mentions it in his campaign. Again, there's a paper advantage to Obama here, but neither his nominal opposition to Prop 8 nor McCain's nominal support for it has had any practical impact.

Despite what he once erroneously said, McCain does not oppose gay adoptions. His campaign clarified that he supports adoptions by loving parents, without regard to sexual orientation. In fact, McCain told the Blade that he "respect[s] the hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian people" struggling and doing their best to raise adopted children. Gay groups have pounced on McCain's original misstatement as evidence that he's "anti-gay," but they never get around to explaining the context and the subsequent clarification.

Also on the subject of gay marriage, we should never forget that McCain led the charge against the Federal Marriage Amendment, loudly bucking his own party and President Bush when it really counted. Though he seems genuinely accepting of gay people, Obama has never taken a position on gay rights that cost him politically. McCain did so on the single most important gay issue of this generation.

It's true that Sarah Palin recently broke with McCain and endorsed the FMA, just as Dick Cheney broke with Bush in 2004 to oppose the FMA. But Palin is not the presidential candidate in this race, McCain is. Amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage is off the table politically, regardless of what Palin thinks - thanks in part to McCain.

The upshot legislatively is this: Under Obama we'd likely get ENDA and a symbolic hate-crimes law. Under McCain, we might get a narrower ENDA and no hate-crimes law. That's all. It's a difference that gay voters are surely right to take into account, but it's hardly a huge difference.

Finally, Obama's judicial nominees will be more gay-friendly and more aggressive about using judicial power to support gay rights than McCain's will be. But McCain will face a strongly Democratic Senate, which will moderate his choices. He also tends to favor judicial-restraint conservatives who respect precedent rather than judicial-activist conservatives who want a right-wing legal revolution.

So while they won't advance the cause, McCain's nominees probably won't reverse prominent gay-rights legal victories, either. Despite what you may have heard, it's unlikely the Supreme Court's decision overturning sodomy laws will even be reviewed, much less reversed, because of appointments by McCain.

None of this will persuade a liberal voter who prefers Obama on lots of non-gay issues. Nor will it persuade a single-issue gay-rights supporter who cares about nothing else. I respect these choices. I myself opposed Bush in 2000 and 2004 because he backed sodomy laws and the FMA. These were red lines for me and Bush crossed them.

But this year is different. While Obama is undisputedly better on gay issues than McCain, the differences in likely results are not so great that a vote for McCain is unforgivable. For those gay and gay-supportive voters who worry about the effect of an Obama administration combined with a Democratic Congress on taxes, spending, trade, Iraq, and national security against terrorism, a vote for McCain this year is not a betrayal of gay rights. For such voters, it's the right choice.

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