“The other side is winning the war on words and the rhetoric,” said Tom McClusky, senior vice president of Family Research Council Action, the legislative arm of the conservative advocacy group. “Generationally, this is an uphill battle for us, and we realize that.”

The Republican senator from North Carolina was blunt. “Because she’s a damn lesbian,” Jesse Helms snapped, explaining to The Washington Times why he would vote against Roberta Achtenberg, President Bill Clinton’s nominee for assistant housing secretary. Later, he clarified, calling her “a militant, activist, mean lesbian.”

That was in 1993. On Saturday, another North Carolina Republican, Richard M. Burr, stood on the Senate floor and surprised gay rights advocates by voting to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Mr. Burr said repeal was “generationally right” given that most Americans have grown up in a time where “they don’t think exclusion is the right thing for the United States to do.”

The two votes, 17 years apart, would suggest a kind of “We’ve come a long way baby” moment. But while public opinion has changed in favor of gay rights over the past two decades, those attitudes are often not reflected in public policy, because the views of lawmakers, polls suggest, lag behind the public, and not just among social conservatives who have long opposed elements of the gay rights agenda on moral grounds.

Polls show the public is broadly supportive of equal rights for gay men and lesbians on several issues — with the exception of the right to marry. The vast majority of Americans, nearly 90 percent, favor equality of opportunity in the workplace.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/us/politics/21rights.html?_r=1&hpw