So, being gay is, like, worse than murder?

Like Hilzoy, I was completely baffled by John McCain attempt to sound moderate by saying he may choose a pro-choice candidate:

"I think it's a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a -- albeit strong -- but just it's a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far moreso than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues.""

Hilzoy digs in on the thinking behind this:

I'm trying to figure out by what logic supporting gay rights might seem worse than supporting abortion rights. Last time I checked, people who were pro-life thought that abortion was murder. People who are gay, by contrast, might be (to conservatives) immoral sodomites, but worse than murderers? How? Saying they're a threat to the family doesn't work: accepting this for the sake of argument (since I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who's opposed to both abortion rights and gay rights), can being gay possibly be a worse threat to the family than allowing parents to legally kill their children?

I mean: how could a disagreement about abortion rights be just a disagreement, while a disagreement about gay rights is somehow orders of magnitude more serious?

Three words--God. Hates. Fags. But apparently not murderers. What the fuck does he even mean "pro-gay rights?" How is that even slur? I think the best part about growing into an old man, for me, is going to be watching all these cowards and demagouges catch the vapors as "gay rights" become mainstreamed. I don't hold anything against conservatives who oppossed "civil rights" when it was convient and then switched when it wasn't. I think some people have had legitimate changes of heart, others were oppurtunists, and then still others--like George Wallace--are just hard to grapple with. But history remembers, you know? And a half-century from now, I have a feeling that a lot of these guys are going to look like cavemen.