Here we go again, Alabama.

We're back in the bedroom, under the covers and into a dark, dark place. It's what we're used to by now. It's ugly and it's dank and it's a sign of our state psychosis.

We cast innuendo with cunning and spite. We cast aspersions without a second thought. We hold ourselves to be moral, and ethical, and full of that lie we call Alabama Values, and we do not care who we hurt.

As long as we look like good, upstanding people.

As long as our opponents do not.

By now you will have heard, surely, of all the maneuvering that took place yesterday in and around the race for Alabama governor. You will have heard of the way Republican candidate Scott Dawson held touring press conferences across the state, standing on the principle that Gov. Kay Ivey failed Alabama when she allowed a series of ADECA grants to continue to be paid to a Huntsville LGBTQ group that was set up - and paid $1.7 million in federal money under the Robert Bentley and Ivey administrations - to prevent bullying and provide other services to the gay community.

"I don't want to fuel speculation or start any rumors," Dawson said over and over again. "I want to stay away from any and all rumors. I don't want to fuel any of that."

And with that he cast his line over all of Alabama. Over all the candidates and operatives and professional political twitterers who've been muttering rumors about Ivey since before she became the governor of Alabama.

Ivey responded immediately, saying she did not agree with "the agenda or the values" of the organization.

And then Patricia Todd bit.

Todd, the first openly gay legislator in Alabama history, who quit this year to take a job with a Florida gay and lesbian group, responded to Ivey on Twitter with exactly what the Dawson camp wanted.

"Will someone out her for God's sake...." Todd wrote, though she refused to respond after. "I have heard for years that she (Ivey) is gay and moved her girlfriend out of her house when she became Gov. I am sick of closeted elected officials."

An outing by rumor. An outing by Twitter. An outing without further comment.

And then Ivey's camp fired back, with a bazooka. They didn't care about collateral damage.

"This is a disgusting lie being pushed by a paid liberal political hack," said Debbee Hancock, Ivey's campaign spokeswoman. "There is absolutely no truth to it."

And here we are again, Alabama, smack dab in the middle of a pitched battle for piety, a confrontation over who waves the flag of Alabama Values and who fails the test.

I don't know what goes on in Kay Ivey's bedroom, and from the sound of it Patricia Todd doesn't have personal knowledge of it either. But here we are.

It was a hard, dirty day and I can't even be sure what I think of it. If Alabama paid a failed group with questionable leadership and a bunch of warning signs $1.7 million - which is a lot for ADECA - it doesn't matter how altruistic Free2Be claimed or tried to be. It was as sketchy as any scam with a worthy sounding name. Like the Office of Faith-Based Services Bentley set up for Rebekah Mason's husband.

But what really concerns me, more than the politics or outing or the question of whether the governor in the most conservative state in America is actually hiding the fact she is gay, is the collateral damage.

Because a whole population was flamed and defamed yesterday. The LGBTQ community in Alabama, and everywhere for that matter, was dehumanized as "they" and marginalized as holding values unfit for this high and mighty state.

It was a "disgusting lie," Ivey's people said. Because gay in Alabama is like some ancient disease, to be secreted away and never seen.

Dawson was far more tactful than the Roy Moores of the world, but when I asked him to define "Alabama Values" he made it clear gay people are not really part of the equation.

"We believe in marriage between a man and a woman," He said. "I believe we hold true to conservative values of family, faith... That's where most of us are."

That's where I'm left at the end of the day. That's why I grieve at the end of the day.

Because people unlike "most of us" are "disgusting." Because what goes on in a bedroom is more important that what goes into law. Because there's an assumption that "family" and "faith" belong to one group and one group only. And that's wrong.

Alabama politics is at it again. And it diminished a whole segment of the population Tuesday. That's disgusting.

John Archibald's column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.