[Strangler Lewis]

As I see it, when we speak of divisiveness, distractions, etc., we are talking about appealing to people's prejudices to trick them into voting against their true self-interest and/or for the common good. We saw a bit of that in the Democratic primary when race and gender appeals were too common.

But . . . unless you want to say that there are no right and wrong positions on particular issues, you can't say that gays, like blacks of the fifties and sixties, use civil rights issues as divisive issues.

It certainly makes no sense to say that blacks were tricked into voting for pro-civil rights politicians when they should have voted the other way (assuming they could vote at at all).

With gays, conceivably an argument could be made that the "rich gays" with all the disposible income should be voting for lower taxing Republicans, not being distracted by gay marriage. This would only make sense if the overwhelming majority of gays didn't care about gay marriage and hadn't thought about it until a few anti-Republican gay activists with a larger agenda started pulling strings. I just don't think that's the case. This is a deeply felt civil rights issue. Thus, being against it is divisive. Being for it is not.