This was a piece of awkward timing: yesterday, as a political scientist testified at the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial that gay men and lesbians lacked political clout, the news came out that Cindy McCain—that would be Cindy McCain, the wife of the Republican party’s standard bearer—had just posed for an ad campaign protesting Proposition 8. She had lent her name and glossy visage to the campaign started by a West Hollywood fashion photographer named Adam Bouska, who is better known for photographing shirtless male models and a couple of “America’s Next Top Models.” In Bouska’s “NOH8” (get it? No Hate) campaign, celebrities and good-looking regular people pose against a white background, with silver duct tape across their mouths and “NOH8” painted on their faces. Meghan McCain had done it last summer—those McCain gals are kicking over the traces!—and now her mom was joining her. As a message on the NOH8 Web site noted, “The McCains are one of the most well-known Republican families in recent history, and for Mrs. McCain to have reached out to use to offer her support truly means a lot.”

The argument that gays and lesbians are politically disenfranchised has always seemed to me the most difficult one for the pro-marriage-equality legal team to make stick. (It’s one of the criteria that would qualify Prop. 8 for strict scrutiny, the standard that would place the highest burden of proof on the proposition’s defenders.) Demonstrating a history of prejudice against gays and lesbians isn’t hard at all. But we do live in a country where there are openly gay elected officials, where the President of the United States was the keynote speaker at the annual dinner for the largest gay-rights organization, and where, as of now, five states and the District of Columbia have managed to legalize gay marriage, while another ten have legalized civil unions or domestic partnerships. Of course, you can still make the point that if marriage-equality advocates have to go to a popular vote, they will usually lose, just as civil-rights advocates would have if they had put Brown v. Board of Education or Loving v. Virginia to a vote instead of turning to the courts. The majority can’t be relied upon to ratify the rights of a minority—that’s what the Constitution is for.

Gary Segura, the Stanford political scientist who testified for the plaintiffs yesterday raised that point when he said, “there is no group that has been targeted with ballot initiatives more than gays and lesbians.” According to the A.P., Segura said, “By any measure, gays and lesbians would have to be understood as a minority faction. People who accept the normativity of heterosexuality have held power essentially forever.” (Note to future expert witnesses: avoid the word “normativity” when off campus.) Still, the fact that such a high-profile Republican woman is clearly in their corner is the kind of data point that’s hard to assimilate into a picture of political powerlessness.

(Photograph: Adam Bouska)

Read “A Risky Proposal,” Talbot’s story on gay-marriage activism and Perry v. Schwarzenegger.