IGF CultureWatch

As they are wont to do, the British demonstrated a steely resolve in the wake of this summer's subway bombings. Yet the Britain of the Blitz-the Britain that has been immortalized in the minds of Americans-is showing cracks. A proper analysis of Great Britain's attempts at integration of Muslims is far too great a task for this column, but the behavior of the mayor of that country's capital city is cause for distress.

On first glance, London's gay community could have no better friend than Ken Livingstone. A legendary member of the far-left wing of the Labour Party, the mayor has been an outspoken advocate for gay rights. He started the first Partnership Register in the United Kingdom. He regularly attends the London Gay Pride Parade. He has worked with his city's police force to crack down on homophobic crime.

In spite of this flawless record on gay rights, Livingstone has repeatedly expressed support for radical Islamist cleric Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Qatar-based imam whom the mayor hosted at City Hall last year. The sheik runs the Web site Islamonline, which, according to the British gay rights group Outrage!, has labeled homosexuals "perverted" and "abominable." Qaradawi himself has called homosexuality a "disease that needs a cure" and his site suggests that gays be executed via "burning or stoning to death." Wives, if they misbehave, are to be beaten, but those concerned about the status of women ought not to be concerned, for the thrashing need only be "light."

Livingstone has called Qaradawi a "leading progressive Muslim" and has said "his is very similar to the position of Pope John XXIII." The Pope was certainly no friend of gays, but one thinks that Livingstone had another comparison in mind. John XXIII, you see, was a reformer who worked to repair the Church's relations with Jews. An odd comparison, nevertheless, given the fact that Qaradawi has called suicide bombings in Israel "martyrdom operations."

In a fit of oxymoronic stupor, Livingstone defended Qaradawi by calling him, "an absolutely sane Islamist."

The sheikh has been banned from entering the United States since 1999. He was invited to a conference in Manchester this summer, but his invitation was later revoked. But Livingstone supported Qaradawi's visit all along-especially after Islamists killed 56 people this summer.

Livingstone's unrepentant embrace of Qaradawi is all the more repulsive in light of revelations made just after the July 7 attacks that gay people may soon be targeted for Islamist terror. Peter Tatchell, the UK's most visible gay rights figure, has stated that he and two other British gay campaigners were informed by anonymous fundamentalists that they are on a "hit list" and are to be "beheaded" and "chopped up" in accordance with "Islamic law."

"If the terrorists want to attack the gay community," Outrage! campaign coordinator Brett Lock said, "they may well attempt to detonate a bomb in a crowded gay bar, restaurant, club or community center." Gay people around the world who have always viewed these locations as places of refuge would be foolish to laugh off the hazard of an Islamist bomb attack on such establishments. Can one imagine a better target in which to murder and maim perverted infidels?

The European left, a natural supporter of homosexual liberation, has bent over backwards in its complete accommodation of Muslims, in spite of the fact that a vocal portion of this community takes a medieval view towards homosexuals. Livingstone has encountered no difficulty in reconciling these conflicting views. Earlier last month in The Morning Star, Britain's Marxist daily, he simultaneously praised his multiculturalism policies and city officials' decision to eliminate regulations hindering London shopkeepers from flying gay pride flags.

Livingstone holds the value of "multiculturalism" as the highest of all, even if that means respecting cultures that seek to destroy ours. The risk of offending a single Muslim is too onerous for Livingstone to condemn those who glorify terror. During the Cold War, the term "useful idiot" (ironically coined by Lenin) was applied to those in the West who excused away or completely ignored the atrocities of Communism. "Red Ken" Livingstone, as he is affectionately known, was a useful idiot then and is no less a useful idiot of the Islamofascists now.

To abandon a class of citizens in order to appease a group judged more politically valuable is more than perverse, it cheapens the ideal of liberalism itself. Democratic citizenship means nothing if we are willing to sell the rights of people down the river because a militant minority demands it.

With the huge loss in Texas, we're now 0-19 in popular votes on gay marriage. Not one of those losses has even been close. What do we do now? First, try not to despair. We need to take a long, historical view of all this. Second, let's try to learn something from the losses. There are many more such votes to come, including probably an all-important one in California next year.

On Nov. 8, with 76 percent in favor, Texans voted for a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. What more it might also be interpreted to prohibit will rest in the hands of the socially conservative and overwhelmingly Republican elected state judiciary, from whose "pro-gay" activist grip the amendment was supposed to save the state. The amendment has done lasting damage to gay couples and families in Texas.

There was a time just a couple of years ago when it seemed to many gay-marriage supporters that the fight would not only be won but won fairly quickly. Private companies, cities, and even states were moving toward the recognition of gay relationships. The Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws. That was quickly followed by full gay marriage in Massachusetts. One national poll showed support for gay marriage around 40 percent, an astonishing figure given that the idea had barely reached national consciousness.

But polls are never trustworthy on controversial social questions and opponents of gay marriage had a trump card-the voters. They have used the public's simmering anger at judicial activism to goad the states into passing sweeping amendments that have actually turned back the clock on the legal rights of gay families.

Despite this backlash, we have to take the long view of this struggle. Consider Massachusetts, the birthplace of gay marriage in the U.S.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Massachusetts banned contraceptives-even if used for medical reasons and even if used by a married couple. Birth-control advocates tried in vain year after year to get the state legislature to repeal the law.

Finally, they succeeded in getting the issue put to a popular vote in 1942. During the repeal campaign they faced a barrage of attacks from the Catholic Church, including the slogan, "Birth Control Is Against God's Law-Vote NO." On November 3, birth-control advocates lost by a large margin, 58 to 42 percent.

In 1948, they lost again in a popular referendum by an almost identical margin. Not until 1966 did the Massachusetts legislature revise its anti-contraceptives law to allow married people to get them, and then only in response to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down an almost identical Connecticut law the year before.

Today, the use of contraceptives is widespread and uncontroversial. Massachusetts is one of the most socially tolerant states in the country.

The gay-marriage controversy is not exactly like the birth-control controversy, of course. Opposition to contraceptives was limited almost entirely to Catholics, whose faith taught that their use violated natural law; mainstream Protestant denominations had no problem with contraception. By contrast, opposition to gay marriage is broad and deep in all mainstream Christian denominations.

But progress can be made. While a majority of the Massachusetts legislature voted to ban gay marriage in 2004, that majority had evaporated by the next year. Now Massachusetts may become the first state to approve gay marriage by popular vote if the issue ever reaches the ballot there.

Like other advocates of ideas once thought dangerous, gay-marriage supporters will lose many battles. Since no serious constitutional scholar believes the Supreme Court is going to hold traditional marriage laws unconstitutional anytime in the near future, we are likely in for a long slog unaided by very much federal court intervention. We might as well prepare for it.

That leads to the second question, what can we learn from our losses? One thing that does not usually work is trying to change the subject. Like all of the anti-amendment efforts before it, the Texas "No Nonsense in November" campaign tried to make the vote about anything but marriage: the irresponsibility of the legislature, the sinister politics of the amendment sponsors, etc. At the end, some opponents of the amendment were even warning that it banned marriage itself.

For voters, these ballot campaigns are about gay marriage. Until we're prepared to defend gay marriage on the substance, the voters will ignore us. (California may well present a more complicated case, about which I'll doubtless write more in the future.)

That's not to say we will start winning these campaigns by being more honest. Nothing we said could have saved us in Texas. But at least we can begin to inform voters about why gay marriage is a good idea. That is the necessary foundation for the long-term democratic support we must build.

The second thing we must do is try to enlist a broader spectrum of allies. Left-wing coalitions, like the one No Nonsense so proudly put together, are never going to win ballot fights over marriage. This means working especially hard to sign up as many moderates, conservatives, and people of faith as possible. It also means emphasizing the types of arguments that appeal to such people.

The race for gay marriage is far from lost. But it is a marathon, not a sprint. And it will require smarter running.