There was a brief time when John Kerry and his campaign had managed to kindle in me a tiny little flicker of faith in the essential decency and sense of the American system and people. This is now dead. A majority of Americans are not moved by facts or by truth or by reason. A majority have gone for fags and flags. I have said it before and it remains true: George Bush and his Republican fellows have a deeply pathological relationship to the truth, and appeal to the most barbaric, divisive, and fundamentally unjust aspects of the American psyche. They are artists in the media of hate and fear. That is not going to change. If anything, this new mandate will make it all worse. Now they know their scaremongering works.

Eleven states last night passed measures enshrining into law discrimination against gay people--my people; the only social or cultural or demographic or whatever group to which I have ever felt any sense of belonging. Even Oregon. I expected it of the South, and I expected it of Utah; but Oregon? The irony of Christians demonising people for experiencing and showing love is not lost on me, but it's also not remotely funny. It is toxic, poisonous. And ultimately futile; as the last four years have shown, no matter what happens, the clock cannot be turned back. We are, as they say, still here, and still queer, and people must still get used to it. Though it may, as last night showed, take some of them rather longer than one might hope, it will still happen. The powers arrayed against us are ultimately doomed; yet they are still formiddable.

But we are on the side of the angels.