Kerry's exegesis:

"l have read the Bible and know that you can find clauses going both ways" on homosexuality.

While I agree that there are lots of interpretations of the Bible (how else do you explain the multiplicity of Christian churches?) I think that's pretty weak.

So is this:

Mr. Kerry answered slowly, first laying out his minutely calibrated stance on gay marriage. "I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman," he said, to polite applause. "But ? but ? but: I believe it's important in the United States of America that we recognize that we have a Constitution which has an equal protection clause," he said, to growing applause.

Then Mr. Kerry drew a connection between racism and antigay crime, noting the 1998 murder of a gay college student, Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, but mangling a reference to James Byrd Jr., a black man who was dragged to his death the same year in Jasper, Tex., by three men including John William King, all of whom were convicted of murder.

"Let me tell you something, when Matthew Shepard gets crucified on a fence in Wyoming only because he was gay," he said, "when Mr. King gets dragged behind of a truck down in Texas by chains and his body is mutilated only because he's gay ? I think that's a matter of rights in the United States of America."

Does that sound like he "showed he could preach from the pulpit one minute and throw political punches the next," as the report's first paragraph puts it?