LGBT, GOP, Ctd

I'm still bemused by the drop in gay support for Obama after Kerry. I'd put it down primarily to the fact that the gay political establishment, with its usual brilliance, fused itself with the Clinton campaign very early on, and there was a real slice of Clintonian anti-Obama hate that wouldn't go away. For much of the campaign, I expressed surprise at how so many gay men and lesbians were indifferent or hostile to Obama. Maybe there was a particular lesbian bond with Clinton, which may have led some lesbians to pick McCain (they're susceptible to a little Alaskan boobage as well). Maybe that goes for some diva-worshipping gay men as well, men who so identified with Hillary that they couldn't reconcile themselves to Obama. But a reader suggests that racism may be more alive and well in the gay community than some of us want to believe:

I think you could do quite a bit more with that startling statistic - McCain 27% vs. Bush 23% among gays, Obama 70% vs. Kerry 77%. As a married gay man I'm upset about Prop 8, but I'm also upset about this blame-the-blacks line. The black vote in California simply wasn't large enough to make a difference, so why are people focusing on that? The eagerness to jump on the black vote for Prop 8, together with the statistic above, points to a smoldering issue in the gay community.

Now, if there were any signals of reluctance from Obama on gay rights, that would be one thing, but here's a candidate who made his debut on the national stage with a speech whose most electrifying passage contained the phrase "and we've got gay friends in the red states." I remember being thunderstruck when he said that