At first glance, this looks like another political smear campaign. That is its intention: To inflame conservative voters to vote out State Senator Mark Grisanti, who is one of four Republicans who defected on a bill providing equality of marriage.

In the mailer, gay men engaged in romance are used to criticize Grisanti as a “whore” for selling out his principles for hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations.

In the video below, Cenk Uygur makes the point that this is what politicians do all the time, but these four Republicans appear to have a bigger than normal take for their changed votes.

The difference here is that I doubt Grisanti is really anti-gay. As a conservative Republican, he and the others felt that it would be political suicide to vote their consciences for gay rights. Thus, they were on record opposing gay rights. Finally, they were enticed to support their principles with some hefty contributions.

This democracy thing is really great as long as you have wads of money.

As Uygur points out, so what about the pictures? There is nothing wrong with gay relationships any more than heterosexual relationships. He has a point there, except close to half the country sees these relationships as a quick trip to hell and same-sex marriage as the death knell for heterosexual marriage, although no one has ever adequately explained why two gay people getting married is supposed to ruin anyone else’s marriage. Heterosexuals are doing a fine job at that on their own with their divorces.

This is still gutter politics, especially the part that reads, “Make sure your Son (sic) says, “Thank you, Mark Grisanti.”

This implies that by making same-sex marriage legal, perfectly straight young men are going to be overcome by lustful desire and abandon their girlfriends because gay sex is so much better than straight sex.

Of course, here in California where same-sex marriage was legal for a brief time, I almost converted to being a homosexual, but the voters made same-sex marriage illegal so I decided to remain a heterosexual. Really, this is the kind of logic the anti-gay advocates use.

Speaking of democracy, I wonder what a political debate would look like if it just had the facts. Wishful thinking…