It's worth noting that Howie Klein does great work with Blue America PAC to get more money to good Democrats and to run ads for them. He blogs over at Down with Tyranny and is himself a gay man.

But I don't think that excuses something like this. I know I'm a minority on this one, but I don't think that homophobia has a particular target. Using a homophobic ad against one person who, however we justify this one, deserves it stirs up homophobia against the rest of us. That might not have been the best idea about a week before Prop 8.

I know that some in the community would justify this based on "hypocrisy," but there is no discourse on the importance of honesty in this ad, why voters should not elect someone based on his hypocrisy, or even a mention of that argument. It's clearly meant to trigger the knee-jerk, lizard brain reaction of the people of California's 26th and make them go out and vote against the queer.

Even the kinda sorta attempt to make this about possible misappropriation of funds, well, there's no need to put the already offensive word "homosexual" in red. Whether he took vacations with a man or a woman shouldn't matter, if that's the central thrust of Blue America's argument.

To me, there isn't much difference between an ad like this and just putting up his picture with the phrase "DON'T VOTE FOR A FAGGOT" underneath.

Progressives can't go around complaining about racist mailers against Barack Obama and then put out homophobic ones against David Dreier. And gays can't complain about anti-gay job discrimination and then tell voters to take someone's job away because he's gay. Unfortunately, being the ones (as either progressives or gays) demanding that other people act on certain moral principles - such as respect, acceptance and equality - means that we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

On another note, Dreier won his reelection 53-40.