Dear Republican friends ...

Some of my best friends are Republicans. I grew up in the Deep South, so they were hard to avoid. While none of them supports the Federal Marriage Amendment--not to my face, at least--none of them is willing to break ranks with the Republican Party over it either. They spent the past year reassuring me with promises that the amendment would fail and that their president had put it on the table for just that reason. Before gay marriage bans were passed in 11 states, my Republican friends had a simple message for me: "Don't panic. We hate those right-wing nut jobs as much as you do."

Now I have a message for them.

Prove it! Take back your party from the religious extremists who are doing so much to demonize the friends you're always willing to console. Stop posting maudlin, disingenuous e-mails on blogs about your deep regret over having to sacrifice your gay friends for more important issues. David Brooks, your esteemed representative on The New York Times op-ed page, is claiming that this whole moral values platform thing is bunk anyway. He says no right-wing mandate emerged from this election. Instead, we're seeing the "big middle."

If you guys are so consumed with remorse, why don't you add a little more middle to that middle and push the right off the map? When you get a mailer from one of those pro-family groups that contains statistics from a supposedly scientific study about how my boyfriend and I will probably have molested three young boys before we see you next, mail it back. But write some choice words on it first. In lipstick. Make a donation to those little enclaves of grinning martyrs called the Log Cabin Republicans. As if the beating they were taking from the rest of us weren't bad enough, this president of yours has practically put them in a coma. They could use a little cheering up. Visit them. Bring them flowers. (Gay Republicans love flowers too.)

Before you start in on me with a diatribe about how one person can't free your party from the grip of the Christian right, I would like to direct your attention to that blue coast on a sea of red--the big one: California. Considering we're all hemp-clad hippies and spoiled Hollywood slackers, it's no surprise we went for Kerry, right? But California has Republicans too, and you could take a few pointers from them. Thanks to them, this blue coast has a Republican governor who broke with the right wing by securing millions for stem cell research and endorsing legal recognition for gay couples on The Tonight Show. But don't take him for some liberal softie in an elephant costume--our three-strikes law is still firmly intact, and even our jaywalkers are running scared at the prospect of having their DNA entered into a national database. If Governor Schwarzenegger is proof of anything, it's that a Republican fist can strike an effective blow without the aid of a divine lightning bolt.

You could have a Schwarzenegger of your very own. But you have to invite him first. And lay off that old bunk about how California is a sundrenched alternate universe, its politics and values as irrelevant to your mainstream way of life as the writings of Noam Chomsky. Remember Ronald Reagan?

Does this sound too harsh? I'm not asking you to burn your Republican membership card. I'm asking you to take back your party, not leave it. The gay friends you have been giving defensive and condescending lectures to all year will surely appreciate it--as soon as they stop peering out the windows in search of the four white-hooded horsemen they expect to come charging up their driveway at any given minute.

There is one problem with this. It's a big one, so I have saved it for last. If you're successful in rescuing the Republican Party from the religious extremists who have held it hostage for almost two decades, you guys will have to say goodbye to a lot of cold, hard cash. I'll leave it to you folks to come up with a good term for a person who accepts money to betray his friends. (Try the Bible.)