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"Bittersweet would be the best way to describe it," sighs Jeffrey Jew, scoping out wine glasses for the apartment he shares with his boyfriend. Jew voted for Obama. Likes his policies a lot. An estimated 70 percent of gays voted Obama, according to exit polls.

"But Obama brought out a lot of the vote against gay marriage," he says. Seventy percent of African American voters supported the California ban. "So one hand gave, and one hand took away."

He's not angry about it, not exactly. He thinks that health care for all of America's kids is more important than him being able to get married tomorrow. It's just that . . .

Why does it seem like equality has to be in short supply, that when it's given to one group, it must be taken from another?

No one wants to say that directly, although it hangs in the air, at Crate & Barrel. It would be too whiny. Too party pooper-y. Some kind of anti-gay message might have been sent, but shouting What about us? feels ungrateful, especially when there are Christmas cookies to be eaten and Tango serving platters to buy and miniature candles shaped like pine cones to smell.

"We're out shopping for our renovated kitchen," says Jeff Van Luyn, with his partner, Jim Stanko. They're not being segregated. They're not being denied entrance to public places. "So how much can we complain?" They buy a juicer, a cutting board, some hand towels.

Van Luyn thinks that the problem is the religious undertones that have become associated with marriage. "When it's just a contract. Like the contract we had with the guy who remodeled our apartment."

"It's very scary to think our most liberal state just banned gay marriage, and in the news it's being muted," says Joe Pusatari, at the benefit with a few friends. Other years, it could have been a front-page story, with A1 headlines describing the bans, and pundits questioning the legality and debating the morality.

As it was, newspapers tucked the stories somewhere in the middle-back, TV stations saved coverage for later. Only in the past few days have protests and marches begun. Other history was being made. Other stories needed to be told. Patience, patience.

Which the shoppers on Thursday night understand.

After all, when Stephanye Grayson heard the election called for Obama, she ran screaming into the empty streets of her Northern Virginia neighborhood. Ran straight out of the house she shares with her partner of 14 years, and over to the house of neighbors Wayne Scott and Leslie Engelking, a gay couple with two children who are also at the benefit. They all stayed up late, talking and laughing about the man who inspires Grayson "in ways I didn't think I'd see in my lifetime."

The euphoria lasted through the next day. The news of Proposition 8 "only registered after the dust began to settle." She hadn't even bothered to check in on it earlier, so certain was she that California would come through for gay rights, unlike her own state, which banned civil unions two years ago. "I thought it was a no-brainer."

It wasn't, California didn't, and now she and Scott are talking about vases containing palm fronds and arranged on a table in an upstairs corner of the store.

"I think you need three for these to work," she says. One vase would just look weird. But if you have several, then it looks intentional. Even if it's ugly, people know it's ugly on purpose. Scott suggests the display might work for his beach house.

"Ugh," says Engelking.

A man walks by with a swatch of tan cloth, leans over the carpet near where Grayson and Scott are standing, seeing if the colors match.

"Scotch eggs? Just apply them to my thighs, why don't you?" cackles someone else, walking past a buffet table.

The lives of the couples in Crate & Barrel on a crisp November evening continue, as they buy their Christmas and nibble on cookies and put their money toward a good cause, because sometimes that's the best you can do.

It's almost the American Dream.