  Gay Republicans continue to wring their hands and mumble, even as their President continues to use the opportunities available to him to announce his support for a ban on gay marriage. There's another sad urlLink article in today's New York Times , showing the "difficult choices" that gay and lesbian Republicans face.
I'm not upset by this at all, really. The individuals quoted in the article seem, by and large, to be for marriage. They had hoped the President wouldn't come out in support of the anti-marriage amendment and now that he has, some of them continue to hope that he won't talk about it too much. Many of them stress that they're not single issue voters. The Times quotes one lesbian who is a registered Republican and a member of Pink Pistols (huh? ), an organization of gay and lesbian gun owners: "All the Democrats just rolled into Congress to vote for this gun control bill. Somebody with my values and beliefs can't be a single issue voter. " Except that she is, as you can plainly see, of course.
(Her single issue just happens to be guns. ) Other gay Republicans cite the President's warrior stance on terror, the tax cuts, and his leadership, in general, as their reasons they're going to vote for him, in spite of his support for the amendment. Well, that's fine. Gays and lesbians can legitimately discuss whether there should be gay marriage or not.
They're also free to make their decision between the candidates based on a range of issues. I see them less as traitors to the gay cause and more as another subset of deluded individuals who see Bush as winning the "war on terror" and showing leadership with tax cuts that have almost no impact on anyone's lives but that create multi-billions in red ink. There are millions like them in this country, content to get their news from Fox or CNN or the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, willing to accept the hot air of the anti-tax rhetoric at face value.
What we need to do is make sure that there are more of the rest of us voting on November 2nd. Now that my rant is over, let me say that I contiinue to be surprised at the continuing momentum of the marriage controversy. When the marriages began in San Francisco, I thought it would be a flash in the pan and that the public at large would see it as another group of activists outside the mainstream. I assumed they would see it the way many Americans see gay pride parades - a gross indulgence that confirms their worst, most irrational fears about gays and lesbians.
But, in the main, they haven't. And the effort by conservatives to paint it that way simply cannot stand up to the photographic evidence - the happy couples, many of them together for years, for the first time getting to enjoy a privilege that has been denied them for so long. Gay and lesbian couples in late middle age, young gays and lesbians with their children, those are amazing images that can't be dismissed. The same can be said of the power of the very simple argument: who gets hurt if gay marriage happens? Specifically, whose life, liberty or pursuit of happiness is curtailed if urlLink those two lesbians kissing on the news report get to marry? I still think this will be put to an end, but we will feel the repercussions of what has happened for a long time to come and the debate over gay marriage has been permanently altered. Now, that's amazing. 
