Lots of polling coming out mainstream attitudes toward gays, both related to us marrying, and just being legal. 

Lengthy piece in tomorrow's USAToday, that's well done and informative. Also good piece in this week's Washington Blade and on PlanetOut.

The Blade story focused on marriage, and the difficulty of passing a constitutional ban:

According to a new Gallup poll taken July 18-20, when Americans were asked whether they favor a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, 50 percent said they favor the amendment and 45 percent said they are opposed.

Interesting. I thought we would have been doing much worse. And all the polls show big trends toward freedom to marry over time. This was really interesting, too:

Growing support for gay marriage over time
1996: 27% favor, 68 % oppose 2003: 39% favor, 55% oppose

Younger Americans show more support*
18-29 years: 61% favor 30-49 years: 37% favor
50-64 years: 40% favor 65 years and older: 22% favor

Clearly seems to indicate that we'll grow our way out of the bigotry over time. Thank God for those twenty-year-olds, raised on MTV.

Lots of solid date from the McPaper story, titled "Gay rights tough to sharpen into political 'wedge issue'":

Strategists in both parties caution that the public's views are changing too rapidly to provide an easy answer. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll indicates that public attitudes toward homosexuals are in the midst of a transformation, though the issues involved remain controversial. Analysts say the shift is fueled by a self-perpetuating cycle: More gay men and lesbians are open about their sexual orientation, prompting some of their family members and co-workers to revise their views. That in turn makes it easier for others to come out of the closet.

More than half of those surveyed said a friend, relative or co-worker had personally told them that he or she was gay; that's more than double the percentage in 1985. Nearly one-third said they had become more accepting of gay people in recent years.

...

More than half of those surveyed said a friend, relative or co-worker had personally told them that he or she was gay; that's more than double the percentage in 1985. Nearly one-third said they had become more accepting of gay people in recent years.

Gay people are increasingly accepted on the job. Nearly nine of 10 of those surveyed in May said homosexuals deserve equal job opportunities. Almost two-thirds said gay couples should share the same health care and retirement benefits as married heterosexuals.

But the nation is almost evenly split when it comes to issues closer to home. Overall, 49% support allowing gay couples to adopt children and 48% oppose it. When it comes to a constitutional amendment that would bar gay marriages, 50% are in favor, 45% against.

...

Publicity in the wake of the court decision may have created some backlash. In the new survey, those polled said by 50% to 44% that homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal. That's a decline from the 60%-to-35% finding in May. Analysts at Gallup said the question would be asked again to test whether the finding reflected a change in attitudes or a temporary blip.

...

A 59% majority in the West and 51% in the East say homosexual relations should be legal. But in the South and Midwest, the dominant views, by 49% pluralities, are that they should be illegal.

Views also vary depending on the type of community in which people live. Among big-city residents, 60% say they should be legal, compared with 53% in midsize cities and suburbs and 48% in small towns and rural areas.

And the PlanetOut story focused on changes over time. We've still got a ways to go, but steadily improving:

A new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows overall increased support for gay marriage compared with a similar study released in 1996.

In the survey, 38 percent of respondents said they supported gay marriage, up from 27 percent in 1996. The poll also showed a decline in opposition to gay marriage, from 65 percent of respondents who opposed same-sex marriage rights in 1996, to a current 53 percent.

I haven't been able to get interested in the CA recall thing until I read Tim Grieve's Salon piece tonight. (You don't have to subscribe to read it; you just have to watch an ad.) Really good writing, really made the subject captivating.

And then there's this quote:

Schwarzenegger has denied the [adultery] allegations, but he has done so in a way that is something less than politic. In a profile in the Weekly Standard last year, Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying that the allegations against him were so outrageous that he didn't even have to explain them away -- to his wife or anyone else. "When someone said [they] walked into my trailer, and I was eating a chick in the living room, [Maria] knows I'm not that stupid, number one. Number two, I have two guards standing out at all times in front of my trailer so no one could walk in ... . That already makes the story not credible."

I am just laughing my ass off. I think Weekly Standard readers would be less appalled about adultery charges than the prospect of hearing a governor talk about eating a chick. He's really something.

I've come to love Arriana, though, and would love to see her win. I always loved her sense of humor, and now I like her politics. And she's got grit. If she could ever get elected gov, she could have a shot at being our first female pres. Hmmmm. Doesn't pass the birthplace requirement, does she? Dianne Feinstein would also increase her chances by getting elected gov--in theory, although that state seems to grind its governors into hamburger lately. And she's running out of time, isn't she? I've always liked her a lot, though. Still think Gore should have picked her as his running mate.

Interesting piece in the Washington Times this week. (Never thought I'd hear myself saying that.)

'Dead men walking' urged to quit '04 race

Strategists for the Democratic front-runners for president are suggesting that the weakest rivals should consider dropping out of the race to help the top contenders build support in the primaries.

...

There is a growing feeling in the party's leadership that several contenders will abandon their races before the end of the year, said one party adviser, who has worked with the Democratic National Committee and with House and Senate Democratic leaders on election strategy. Those candidates have not been able to break out of single digits in most polls for next year's state primaries.

Nice in theory, but is it realistic? The ones at the absolute back are the very ones who always knew it was hopeless, and are in it just to make a point. So why would they drop out? Seems to me like the best hope lies in the middle: Gephardt, Graham . . . and that's about it. MAYBE Kucinich. Eventaully Edwards, if he doesn't get going. But he'll stay in for awhile. He's young and he's raised a lot of money. Seems like at the least he'll want to rev up name recognition for the next time. He's come this far already.

(It also makes me smile to consider that three months ago, all the stupid pundits would have put Dean on that dead-man list. Now he and Kerry are considered the frontrunners that everyone is supposed to clear the field for. Personally, I think it's silly not to give hopeless candidates like Kucinich and Sharpton more time to prove whatever they want to prove. But old deadwood like Gephardt ought to bow out any day now. And make room for Wesley Clark.)

Hmmmm. I want to believe the worst about Nixon, but this sounds a little fishy:

Aide Says Nixon Ordered Watergate

(AP) Coming forward three decades after Watergate, a former top aide to President Richard Nixon now contends that Nixon ordered the break-in that would lead to his resignation.

Jeb Stuart Magruder previously had gone no further than saying that John Mitchell, the former attorney general who was running the Nixon re-election campaign in 1972, approved the plan to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office building near the White House and bug the telephone of the party chairman, Larry O'Brien.

Magruder, in a PBS documentary airing Wednesday and in an Associated Press interview last week, says he was meeting with Mitchell on March 30, 1972, when he heard Nixon tell Mitchell over the phone to go ahead with the plan.

... 
Magruder, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and perjury charges stemming from the break-in and spent seven months in prison, explained his three decades of silence on Nixon's culpability by telling the AP on Friday: “Nobody ever asked me a question about that.”

That last line in particular. Please.

One more excerpt from the AP piece:

Some historians doubt the allegation by Magruder, who was Nixon's deputy campaign director, an aide to Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and deputy communications director at the White House. Stanley Kutler, an expert on Nixon's White House tapes, called it “the dubious word of a dubious character.”