It was striking not because a convention or political party should make a list of minority groups and dutifully put a check mark beside each. That’s an often hollow bow to political correctness.

It was striking because the Republicans went so emphatically far, in terms of stagecraft and storytelling, to profess inclusiveness, and because we gays have been in the news rather a lot over the last year or so, as the march toward marriage equality picked up considerable velocity. We’re a part of the conversation. And our exile from it in Tampa contradicted the high-minded “we’re one America” sentiments that pretty much every speaker spouted.

It also denied where the country is so obviously headed and where so many Republicans have quietly arrived. To wit: David Koch, the billionaire industrialist who has funneled millions into efforts to elect Romney and other Republicans, told a Politico reporter who caught up with him in Tampa and asked him about gay rights, “I believe in gay marriage.” Reminded that Romney didn’t, Koch said, “Well, I disagree with that.”…

People who know Romney well tell me that he’s not in the least judgmental about gays and lesbians and that he’s more or less accepting of them. That may be so, but it makes him, like others in his party, guilty of a kind of doublespeak, their private sentiments at odds with their public stances.