Fairly Satisfied Customers

Things overheard at a Thursday night holiday fundraiser, a breathless shopping extravaganza we'll call "Food & Friends does Crate & Barrel":

"Ornaments! Ornaments! I'm such a Christmas freak!"

"I need to find placemats. So my dogs have something nice to eat on."

"Don't worry, we're just friends. I wasn't trying to hit on him. This couch, I might hit on . . . "

And:

"I'm happy about the election. I am not happy about Prop 8."

Such was the mood at the 14th annual party, in which the Tenleytown Crate & Barrel store closed its doors to the public and opened them to the 750 or so F&F supporters who had paid $35 for admission. The ticket price -- plus 10 percent of the evening's sales -- benefits the charity, which delivers meals to local AIDS and cancer patients.

"I love this night because it's the triple crown: furniture, food and fruits," says Jack Curry, who has attended the benefit for several years with his partner, Chris Soller. Soller loads the couple's basket with glass tumblers, $1.95 apiece.

But in between the shopping, the food (mini pork sandwiches, oven-roasted apples), and the pitter-pat conversations that make this event a divine hors d'oeuvre to the holiday season, there were other conversations. About inequality and injustice. About how much progress has really been made.

On election night, as ecstatic Obama supporters stormed the White House, as racial barriers fell with each state gone blue, gays saw one of their barriers put back up. Proposition 8, a California ballot measure to amend the state constitution to specifically prohibit same-sex marriage, passed by a half a million votes, 52 to 48 percent. Some 18,000 gay couples have wed in the state since its Supreme Court ruled such marriages were legal six months ago. Tuesday's vote overturned that decision, and it's not clear what happens to all those happy couples.

Similar bans also passed in Florida and Arizona, and in Arkansas voters approved a ban on unmarried couples adopting children. The Arkansas Family Council framed the proposal as a war against the "gay agenda."

All over the country. Again and again and again.