The Democratic candidates for the Presidency attended a debate on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Issues hosted by the Human Rights Campaign in Los Angeles, and ended up showing some significant differences. Surprising, no - but significant, yes. They’ll be broken down below.

KUCHINICH AND GRAVEL: Before getting to the way in which the others are different, we’ll handle the two that may as well be the same. Dennis and Mike both insist that so far as LGBT issues - all issues, actually - are concerned, love is the answer.

No, I’m serious. They said that.

And while they may have a point there on a certain humanist or Christian level, love as an effective governing policy or means of defense has yet to be conceived of. Love’s also pretty subjective in many cases - Do you love Israeli settlers more than Palestianians barely surviving on the land they want? If not, whose house are you going to deny them and call it love?

Metaphysics made policy aside, their positions on LGBT issues are all the most advanced in terms of social liberties. Their position is consistently, “whatever the community wants, with us, it gets.” That either of these men could convince the rest of Washington and the American public to march to that tune is highly unlikely.

RICHARDSON: Bill Richardson seemed as tired of the debate as I was of listening to it at that point. He was unenthusiastic, talked about legislation that he’d launched and seen fail, and sat on the fence about gay marriage in a big way.

Perhaps it was his reluctance to stand for a strong, federalized law ensuring civil unions, but somehow Richardson earned this panel’s Kiss of Death question. They asked him if he believed sexual orientation is a choice.

Or, in essence, “would you like to lose the vote of the gay community and their sympathizers, or most traditional religious groups?”

He at least took a stance - “It’s a choice” - which is not the one the gay community, who actually are gay, take. I suppose that’s better than others I’ve heard on this widely debated question that still has psychologists scratching their heads on some aspects, for instance “I know people who’ve chosen not to be gay” and “I think everyone’s at least a little gay.”

EDWARDS: Edwards showed why he’s always seemed a perpetual second-stringer to me. He’s reactionary and loves to divert. This is no knock to his expertise or anything, but it does not distinguish one was what many consider to be fit for a role of “First Citizen of the World”.

Rather than expand on his policy or how he’d get it enacted, Edwards talked about everybody but himself. He touched on his wife, Ann Coulter, “the Right”, Bush, and spun syrupy-sweet yarns to show that his heart runs raw. This is all very well and good for someone you want as your televangelist. As a President, anecdotes take a back seat to action.

Another defining Edwards moment was when he was asked about his statements that his wife, but not he, supported gay marriage, and that his lack of support came from “his faith.” He claimed that this was because he was “on a journey” with the issue, and I assume he meant in an internal sense, but it may’ve just meant from a red state to a blue state considering what he said last night.

Joe Solomone confronted him with his comments and asked, “Just what about your faith leads you to oppose gay marriage?”

Edwards responded that it had been “wrong” for him to say that; it was wrong to use faith to justify policy positions, there had been enough of that the last seven years. In fact, he supported gay marriage now! Praise Jesus!

Solomone’s answer to this would’ve been mine. “Considering you were ‘on a journey’ with this issue”, he asked, “where on that journey do you think you are now?” The end? Just stopping by, maybe?

OBAMA: Obama had a lot going for him in this debate. He went first, considering he responded positively to the invitation first. He has, as he said, made equal freedoms for all and speaking the truth even when especially difficult hallmarks of his career. And in what he said this night, he set himself apart from other candidates who support “civil unions”.

He summed up his position carefully, surely cautious about offending those who would feel their marriage’s “specialness” jeopardized by gay marriage. He said he wanted to “disentangle ‘marriage’ from the civil rights issue.” He intended to institute this federally - to make all marriage licensing a federal, civil union license.

This is a terrific notion. It allows religions to call the civil union that the state grants whatever they want - marriage, hand-fasting, what-have-you - and so lets churches stick to their faith. Gays can get married in churches that will marry them. They can call it marriage. They will have the same right to do so, and all the same legal rights as anyone else who calls themselves married, straight or gay.

It went over like a lead balloon. It’s tragic that the moderators and commentators didn’t see the potentials in this scheme of “marriage control”, that essentially liberates the term for private use while extending public rights to all.

Particularly considering that it was considered on parity with Hillary’s solution.

CLINTON: Clinton was a mass of excuses as to why things didn’t change during the 90s - “Republicans” - and why they won’t change quickly even today - “Republicans.” She explained that politics is a gradual process, and that it’s other people, not her, that are to blame for this. Once she’s in charge, there won’t be this problem, apparently.

Coverage of this debate have not distinguished her from Obama or Edwards, simply saying they were all against DOMA and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and in favor of anti-discrimination laws and civil unions. This is patently false. Saying Obama spoke in favor of the same concept of civil unions as Hillary is like saying Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in favor of Jim Crow laws.

Clinton advocated that civil unions and gay marriage be a state issue. She would make sure that civil unions be mandated as having full equivalence with marriage rights, but the rest is up to the states to decide. How is this different from Obama’s?

Well, it’s different in that since gay marriage became an issue, some twenty-eight states have been coerced by fringe political activists to write into their Constitution that marriage should be defined as a union between a man and a woman. How this is not being contested as a violation of both the 1st and 14th Amendments, I do not know - it is, in essence, writing a law saying that one group can exercise a certain kind of speech and another group cannot. Hillary’s plan will explicitly allow this to continue. Leaving it to the states is just what happened under the era of “separate but equal”.

And yet she got a standing ovation.