Ghost of a flea

Another factor at work is the “false consensus bias.” It’s a shame the things Obama has had to do out of political necessity, you tell yourself, but I know deep down he cares about gay rights and is just “playing a long game” — he’ll do what he can when he can. Deep down, he’s on the same page as me. Of course, this is bull. Experiments have shown that we’re all terrible intuitive psychologists and extremely prone to projecting our views onto others (that is, in the absence of evidence, we assume people think what we do).

He’s against same-sex marriage, defends the Defense of Marriage Act in court, is iffy on ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and isn’t yet prepared to grant health, retirement, or survivor’s benefits to gay couples who work for the feds. But aside from all that, he’s all about the tolerance. I give The One credit here for actually having the elephantine stones to say that the government needs the best possible talent at its disposal while it’s still busy expelling military translators for being gay, and for calling for DOMA’s repeal when he could effectively achieve that on his own by refusing to defend legal challenges to the statute. On the other hand, given the identity politics at stake, there’s no reason for him to grant gays any concession at all. Voting Democrat is what any “authentic” gay person should do, regardless of whether they get anything from it. Just ask a minority voter.