If Andrew Sullivan were not so obsessed with Sarah Palin and actually took the time to understand gay people outside the left-wing circles he now frequents, he might have something intelligent to say about why gays were the only demographic where McCain did significantly better than did George W. Bush four years ago.

Take a moment to think about it; the answer is easy.  Gay people, like all Americans, vote on a great variety of issues, not just items of particular concern to our demographic.  That McCain did not the same ties to social conservatives as did W reassured gay voters.  Not just that.  McCain had not only opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004, he actually spoken out against it.  No serious commentator could even claim he was using us as a wedge issue.

Had it not been for the market meltdown and McCain’s failure to articulate an economic message, the Republican would have surely garnered 30 if not 35% of the gay vote.

You’ll notice this post is considerably shorter than my average posts.  That’s because there’s really not much to say.  Basically, John McCain did better among gay Americans because, unlike George W. Bush in 2004, he did not give us a reason to vote against him.

Of course, I’d like to think that our posts and my essays in the Washington Blade and on gaywired.com made a difference, in no small part because I reminded them how this year’s Repubilcan nominee actually reached out to gays within his party. 

I’d been compiling notes for a post on why (I believe) John McCain lost the presidential election.

I’ll make one brief observation before getting to the meat of this post.  As I review my own notes, past posts and consider other people’s opinions, I’ll just say, given all Obama’s advantages and McCain’s mistakes, I’m amazed the election was as close as it was.

Anyway, this morning, Glenn linked Ann Althouse’s piece How McCain lost me where she basically assembles her posts offered during the course of the election and concludes with some commentary.  I highly recommend it.  I think she’s a little harsh in her fourth point (at the end), but, hey, that’s her opinion.

I do, however, share her view on points one (“He did not understand economics, the most important issue”) and three (“He never defined himself as a principled conservative”).  They basically correspond to conclusions I have reached.  Read the whole thing!

All in all, I think conservatives reacted appropriately (meaning: quiet) to the “Nancy Reagan” comment during Pres-Elect Obama’s first news conference last week.   But I know some are expressing loud outrage and highlighting Obama’s joke as evidence he doesn’t have a bi-partisan bone in his body.

Puh-leeeze.  There is plenty of documented evidence of Obama’s policy record as a far-left liberal.  But a harmless (and I thought funny) joke about Nancy Reagan and “dead Presidents” is really nothing to get worked up about.

Frankly, I find it a bit refreshing to have a President who cracks a joke and makes the room chuckle, not wince in pain.

Time will tell, but let’s not jump on the guy based on this one joke.  I’m with Andy McCarthy at National Review:

Let’s not act like a bunch of Lefties just looking to be aggrieved over this or that slight.  This is likely to be a tough stretch, and we’ll need to be able to laugh — at ourselves and at the other side — to get through it.

People are way too sensitive and willing to scream “sexist”, “homophobe” or “racist.”

Sometimes a joke is just a joke.

Lighten up, America.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

While I disagree (strongly) with Dale Carpenter’s suggestion that juvenile gay activists should move their protests from Mormon Churches to marriage license bureaus, he makes an excellent point about the protests:

Here’s my advice to righteously furious gay-marriage supporters: Stop the focus on the Mormon Church. Stop it now. We just lost a ballot fight in which we were falsely but effectively portrayed as attacking religion. So now some of us attack a religion? People were warned that churches would lose their tax-exempt status, which was untrue. So now we have (frivolous) calls for the Mormon Church to lose its tax-exempt status? It’s rather selective indignation, anyway, since lots of demographic groups gave us Prop 8 in different ways — some with money and others with votes. I understand the frustration, but this particular expression of it is wrong and counter-productive.

I think that any protest would be counterproductive. Instead, we should see a housecleaning at gay organizations and the selection of new leaders who refuse to demonize social conservatives, but seek instead to persuade them.

Once these new leaders take office, they will say something like this:

Look, Proposition 8 won because we failed to make the case why gay marriage is good for society. We understand the very valid concerns some people have about gay marriage; they believe the institution as an exclusive union between individuals of different genders. It is out task to convince them why it’s time to expand the longstanding definition of marriage to include same-sex as well as different-sex couples.

Let me repeat, they’re the ones pushing a social change.  They need make the case for gay marriage, if that’s what they really want.  They can’t keep blaming others for their failures.  I mean, this is not the first time voters have passed an initiative amending their state’s constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.  Voters in every state, every state, which has considered such an initiative (narrowly drawn) have passed them.

They need a different strategy, a better narrative.

For as long as I’ve been blogging about gay marriage, I’ve been saying we need make an affirmative case for gay marriage. I doubt most heads of gay organizations have paid much attention because, well, because of my partisan leanings.

Now that they’ve lost in California, maybe they should pay more attention to gay conservatives. At least we have associated with social conservatives opposed of same-sex marriage.  We speak their language.  And it’s they we need to convince, through gentle suasion not angry protests.