Your assertion was true in a *Will and Grace* era– in the 2000 election cycle, also in 2004, Steve. But clearly, hearts and minds are changing rapidly on LGBT workplace nondiscrimination (and marriage equality, too).

It’s not just the policies, but also the tone of the president in the White House that matters. Popular culture has a wider, perhaps more lasting impact on changing hearts and minds. But, and somewhat to your point, mass media and culture take their broad cues from societal changes reflected by election results.

I’m intimately familiar with VA’s rather conservative 5th CD (next door to Eric Cantor’s 7th), and I see it with every visit. An Executive Order directing LGBT nondiscrimination would have been greeted with a giant yawn by federal contractors and Commonwealth business rank-and-file alike.

From 2006 on, even among those strongly opposed to marriage equality, national polls have shown consistent majority and growing Center and Right support for workplace nondiscrimination for LGBTs. Despite the internet, cable TV and increased higher education levels, there are still highly bigoted areas in our country. However, TODAY, opposing what are increasingly seen as simple fairness rights for LGBTs is a net/net voter-losing proposition in broad swaths, blue and red, all across the country.

The president lost votes by SHOUTING his denial of this issue at a Jay Carney press conference — and in this era of *American Family* and *Glee*. Again, voters are increasingly cutting through this exquisite politics hoo-ha. This decision looks hypocritical to voters, Left, Right and Center, simply because it IS hypocritical.

Thank you for putting it so perfect, Brian. That IS the fact, that so many ignorant to that which history has taught us choose to ignore in their own comfortable inequality and laziness.

The Right is highly motivated and engaged by gay issues. The Left, not as much.

“Pro-gay” acts by Obama between now and November mean a minimal number of “extra” votes for him and LOTS of added votes for Romney.

Suddenly a president who has long been admired for the courage of his convictions on civil rights, not just by progressives, but passionate civil rights advocates– left, independent and right voters– has had his record significantly besmirched. President Obama looks to some, now, like just another expedient politician.

Voters of all stripes are motivated or (DE-motivated) for a variety of reasons. Motivating Obama-friendly voters (left, right and center)– in numbers that matter to outcomes– to actually get out and vote in a swing state like VA. (in its very conservative 5th CD, e.g.), on what may be a rainy day is made more difficult if those voters feel the president’s is just “less bad” than Mitt Romney.

Stay-at-home voters can change otherwise wisely-anticipated election results, too. For example, Obama did not carry VA’s 5th CD in 2008, but he got enough highly *motivated voters* out to vote for him (or against “W” Bush) to enable the stronger Obama areas of VA to snatch its electoral votes from the Republicans for the first time in some decades.

An Obama-besmirching decision like this can easily cause many of those who are civil rights-motivated (again, including swing GOP and Indy voters) to stay at home in Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Martinsville– all places where Obama’s personal visits in 2008 helped him carry the state’s electoral votes.

Moreover, your opinion implies that somehow the president will gain more votes than he is likely to lose in my above example. But just exactly how many federal contractors are clamoring for President Obama’s highly-publicized okeedoke for them to discriminate against their LGBT employees? Seriously. How many votes do you suppose that represents as a counterweight to those the president is likely to lose?

Of course that’s just the political hoo-ha side of it. Fact is, the quest for fundamental civil rights should never stop for any campaign season. History has long proven that political election campaigns are precisely the most effective times to stimulate voters to civil rights action, building the necessary political foundations for change in civil rights policy.

We are truly a moronic, self-destructive community. Instead of pushing Obama on this and similar pro-gay actions AFTER his reelection, we’re pushing him 6 months before the election and giving the enemy all the fodder they’re begging for.

Sometimes I think we deserve to lose.

I really do.