Listening to Dick Cheney talk about equal rights while the Republican platform was being hardened against homosexuals, and McCain's and Arnold's convention speeches, I have come to realize the following:
You can be a Republican and be for equal rights for all Americans, including homosexuals, as long as it's not important to you that we all actually GET equal rights.
You can be a Republican and support a sound foreign policy, fiscal responsibility, and open government, as long as none of that is really important to you.
And you can be a Republican and support women's rights, as long as they don't matter all that much to you.
So that's the big Republican tent: believe what you want, as long as it doesn't matter to you and you'll do things ou(R) way.