I got into a bloody battle the other day with some idiot on a blog who was pissing and moaning about the California Supreme Court's ruling that prohibiting lesbians and gay men from marrying was a violation of the state's constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.

It's coming at a bad time, he said. He was afraid that having that issue in the news, and a constitutional amendment designed to strip that right away on the ballot, would drive right wingers to the polls and cost us the White House in November.

Of course, he's not insane; that Rovian strategy did in fact work quite well for the Republicans four years ago, and four years before that. And yes, it might work again, although I'm thinking, at least in California, it won't.

But whether I'm right or wrong about that, one thing I do know: anyone queer with a television or Internet access is going to have a few rough months, at least as far as political ads and punditry go. It's gays, guns, and God, and there are people who sincerely believe the last on that list wants them use the second on the first. And this hostility towards us and our civil rights is going to continue to feed the gaping maw of the sensationalism-hungry cable news monster.

It's already happening. I once thought using the term "San Francisco" as code for "gay" was a dogwhistle, but this series of ads for Republican Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) — who once called George W. Bush a "deep thinker" — against Democratic challenger and former Kansas City, MO, mayor Kay Barnes proved me wrong. You don't need better-than-human hearing to hear this loud and clear: