Here’s an e-mail with which I concur entirely: “I didn’t vote for Bush for lots of reasons. But it seems to me that maybe the result, much as it was not what I wanted, will be good for the country. We are in the middle of a war whose outcome is very much in doubt. We have a fiscal policy that may or may not prove successful. Issues that have seemed remote to many like abortion and the Patriot Act’s definition of rights and privacy are likely to become more immediate over the next few years. Had we changed leadership now, it would have been difficult to assign accountability, for good or bad, for these policies and decisions.

“I always feared, in fact, that Kerry would have had little chance of success in the face of a conservative chorus of “everything was going in the right direction in Iraq when we handed it over to you.” Whatever the result, over the next few years we all will be better able to asses the success or failure of many things that are unfinished now, and hold one team accountable.”

Exactly. My main fear with a Kerry victory was that the hard right would never have given him a chance in the war, and would have savaged him as commander in chief in order to pave the way for a victory in 2008. Ratcheting the country back to fiscal sanity would also have been a thankless task.

Now, President Bush will face the consequences of his own policies and we will be able to judge him on that. He has no excuses any more. I hope he succeeds in Iraq and in reforming Social Security. But no one should give him an easy pass if he fails.

The Impact On Gays

I’ve been trying to think of what to say about what appears to be the enormous success the Republicans had in using gay couples’ rights to gain critical votes in key states. In eight more states now, gay couples have no relationship rights at all. Their legal ability to visit a spouse in hospital, to pass on property, to have legal protections for their children has been gutted. If you are a gay couple living in Mississippi, you know one thing: Your family has no standing under the law and it can and will be violated by strangers. I’m not surprised by this.

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses. But it is deeply dispiriting nonetheless. At the same time, gays can still appeal to the fair-minded center. After fanning the flames of fear for much of the year, the president himself recently came out in favor of civil unions. That puts him at odds with the initiatives passed so easily across the country.

The national exit polls showed that 27% percent support marriage rights, 37% support civil unions and only 35% want to keep gay couples from having any rights at all. There are still many states where it is safe to be a gay couple or an openly gay person. We have the right to marry in one state, and in that state, pro-equality legislators were all reelected handily. In California, we are on the brink of having almost-equality under the law.

Around the civilized world, gay relationships are increasingly accepted as worthy of dignity and respect. The passage of so many anti-gay amendments in so many states reduces the need, by any rational measure, for a federal amendment that would scar the Constitution with discrimination. We need, therefore, to be even more emphatic about the need for a federalist response to an issue best left to the states. If we can avoid the FMA, we can live to fight another day.

But one more thing is important. The dignity of our lives and our relationships as gay people is not dependent on heterosexual approval or tolerance. Our dignity exists regardless of others’ fear. We have something invaluable in this struggle: the knowledge that we are in the right, that our loves are as deep and as powerful and as God-given as their loves, that our relationships truly are bonds of faith and hope that are worthy, in God’s eyes and our own, of equal respect.

Being gay is a blessing. The minute we let their fear and ignorance enter into our own souls, we lose. We have gained too much and come through too much to let ourselves be defined by others. We must turn hurt back into pride. Cheap, easy victories based on untruth and fear and cynicism are pyrrhic ones. In time, they will fall. So hold your heads up high. Do not give in to despair. Do not let the Republican Party rob you of your hopes. This is America. Equality will win in the end.

The Enemy Strikes

“Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Have mercy. Have mercy.” Those were the last words of Theo Van Gogh, a fearless liberal critic of traditional Islam’s brutal treatment of women, as Jihadist thugs murdered him on an Amsterdam street. Mercy? From these maniacs? Van Gogh was shot several times and then had his throat cut. The culprits were a gang of Islamists:

“Piet Hein Donner, the Dutch justice minister, said the suspect ‘acted out of radical Islamic fundamentalist convictions’ and added that he had contacts with a group that was under surveillance by the Dutch secret service. The suspect is allegedly friends with Samir Azzouz, an 18-year-old Muslim of Moroccan origin awaiting trial on charges of planning a terrorist attack against a nuclear reactor and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, NOS Dutch national television reported. Azzouz was part of a group arrested in October 2003 but released for lack of evidence. He was re-arrested in June.”

This is a useful reminder of the danger that has not gone away. Will Europe’s secular liberals condemn it? And can Europe face up to what is happening within its own admirably tolerant society?

Mr. Sullivan writes every day for www.andrewsullivan.com.