In the debate about gay marriage, a lot of attention is paid to civil unions vs. marriage and, while I agree with Jenna that creating inequalities in law – even if the two terms fundamentally stand for the same thing – creates untenable violations of the rights of LGBT people, I am a pragmatist at heart.

In Canada, the fight for same-sex marriage was not won with a grand challenge and call for equality (although that was going on in the background with much help from civil society organizations). The first big gay marriage win was a case about a woman whose partner, after years of living together, kicked her out of the matrimonial home, changed the locks and unilaterally took her name off their joint business. She went to the courts for the same divorce rights as her straight friends.

And won.

In that decision, no one mentioned “gay marriage.”

Meanwhile, groups around the country, especially unions like the Canadian Auto Workers, were fighting for same-sex benefits at private employers. Soon, the courts were forced to determine that under the equality provisions, the word spouse (both common law and married) had to include same-sex couples.

That led to a debate about civil unions and, only after the government had supported a separate but equal regime, was there a decision requiring the same legal term for both straight and same-sex relationships.

What this history tells us is that these little battles that have been playing out in states across the country are important. And the battles we fight everyday to have employers recognize our relationships without a government mandate are also essential.

But no government, not even Obama, will leap into equality without being forced to do so. And while I believe in activism by the courts, maybe we all have to settle for a piecemeal struggle for the rights in the marriage basket. That is what the new DOMA challenge is about.

I am infuriated by calls for separate but equal and am frustrated by the inaction of the current administration. But that part of me that understands politics and history recognizes that rights may have to be won one by one before real equality can be achieved.

I’m ready for this election season to be over. Last night the debate ends, I’m sitting at my desk about to write my reaction and I’m out. Asleep at the keyboard. Finally wake-up this morning after the alarm goes off. And it wasn’t even a good sleep because I had some dream about Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher (who noted  that in his tete-a-tete with Barack Obama the Democratic nominee for president “tap dance[d]…almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.”

I think it’s fair to say this was John McCain’s most aggressive debate performance. He attacked Obama every chance he got, but some of the attacks did no damage. When McCain rightly complained about the comments by Rep. John Lewis, the Arizona senator said Obama did not repudiate Lewis. Wrong. As for the Ayers attack, McCain came off as weak. If you are going to say on the stump and in ads that Obama pals around with terrorists, then at least have the nerve to ramp up the rhetoric a bit when your opponent is sitting next to you.

But if you are going to attack, your opponent has to play along and get bloodied. Obama didn’t flinch, smiled, kept talking about economics (confession: this while economy melt-down has me freaked out!), looked into the camera, didn’t come off as peevish, and listed the names of the people who he goes to for advice (all white men by the way).

How this last debate will impact the election is beyond me really. I know the polls are pointing to Obama but I still think this race is too close to call.

PS: Why doesn’t McCain know the difference between Down’s Syndrome and autism?

Unruffled, and ahead in the polls, Obama parried each charge, and leveled a few of his own.

“One hundred percent, John, of your ads, 100 percent of them have been negative,” Obama shot back in an uncommonly personal debate less than three weeks from Election Day.

“It’s not true,” McCain retorted.

“It is true,” said Obama, seeking the last word.

McCain is currently running all negative ads, according to a study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But he has run a number of positive ads during the campaign.

The 90-minute encounter, at a round table at Hofstra University, was their third debate, and marked the beginning of a 20-day sprint to Election Day. Obama leads in the national polls and in surveys in many battleground states, an advantage built in the weeks since the nation stumbled into the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

With few exceptions, the campaign is being waged in states that voted Republican in 2004 – Virginia, Colorado, Iowa – and in many of them, Obama holds a lead in the polls.

McCain played the aggressor from the opening moments of the debate, accusing Obama of waging class warfare by seeking tax increases that would “spread the wealth around.”

The Arizona senator also demanded to know the full extent of Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, a 1960s-era terrorist and the Democrat’s ties with ACORN, a liberal group accused of violating federal law as it seeks to register voters. And he insisted Obama disavow last week’s remarks by Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat, who accused the Republican ticket of playing racial politics along the same lines as segregationists of the past.

Struggling to escape the political drag of an unpopular Republican incumbent, McCain also said, “Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. … You wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”

Obama returned each volley, and brushed aside McCain’s claim to full political independence.

“If I’ve occasionally mistaken your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people – on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities – you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush,” he said.

McCain’s allegation that Obama had not leveled with the public involved the Illinois senator’s decision to forgo public financing for his campaign in favor of raising his own funds. As a result, he has far outraised McCain, although the difference has been somewhat neutralized by an advantage the Republican National Committee holds over the Democratic Party.

“He signed a piece of paper” earlier in the campaign pledging to accept federal financing, McCain said. He added that Obama’s campaign has spent more money than any since Watergate, a reference to President Nixon’s re-election, a campaign that later became synonymous with scandal.

Obama made no immediate response to McCain’s assertion about having signed a pledge to accept federal campaign funds.

Asked about running mates, both presidential candidates said Democrat Joseph Biden was qualified to become president, although McCain added this qualifier: “in many respects.”

McCain passed up a chance to say his own running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was qualified to sit in the Oval Office, though he praised her performance as governor and noted her work on behalf of special needs children. The Palins have a son born earlier this year with Down Syndrome.

Obama sidestepped when asked about Palin’s qualifications to serve as president, and he, too, praised her advocacy for special needs children.

But he quickly sought to turn the issue to his advantage by noting McCain favors a spending freeze on government programs.

“I do want to just point out that autism, for example, or other special needs will require some additional funding if we’re going to get serious in terms of research. … And if we have an across-the-board spending freeze, we’re not going to be able to do it,” he said.

Some examples:

OBAMA: “Every dollar that I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut, so that it matches.”

THE FACTS: The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that his programs would add $281 billion to the deficit at the end of his first term. The analysis includes Obama’s proposals for saving money.

—

McCAIN: “We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much.”

THE FACTS: This is a reference to U.S. spending on oil imports. McCain has repeatedly made this claim. But the figure is highly inflated and misleading. According to government agencies that track energy imports, the United States spent $246 billion in 2007 for all imported crude oil, a majority of it coming from friendly nations including neighboring Canada and Mexico. An additional $82 billion was spent on imported refined petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel and fuel oil. A majority of the refined products come from refineries in such friendly countries as the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, Trinidad-Tobago and the Virgin Islands.

—

OBAMA: “One hundred percent, John, of your ads – 100 percent of them – have been negative.”

THE FACTS: The statement is true when it comes to McCain’s current commercial spots. But by saying McCain’s ads “have been” 100 percent negative, Obama ventures into misleading territory. McCain is currently running all negative ads, according to a study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But he has run a number of positive ads during the campaign.

—

McCAIN: “Sen. Obama is spending unprecedented amounts of money in negative attack ads on me.”

THE FACTS: Obama is spending unprecedented amounts of money on ads, period – negative or otherwise. Obama is outspending McCain and the Republican Party by more than 2-to-1 in presidential ads. At one point in August, 90 percent of the ads Obama was airing were against McCain. A study conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that about 34 percent of Obama’s ads are now negative.

—

OBAMA: “I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans, 95 percent.”

THE FACTS: Obama constantly says this. But the independent Tax Policy Center says his plan cuts taxes for 81.3 percent of all households in 2009.

—

McCAIN: Said of Obama’s running mate Sen. Joe Biden: “He had this cockamamie idea of dividing Iraq into three countries.”

THE FACTS: Biden actually proposed dividing Iraq into three semiautonomous regions, not separate countries. He was a prime sponsor of a nonbinding Senate resolution that called for Iraq to have federal regions under the control of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in a power-sharing agreement similar to the one that ended the 1990s war in Bosnia.

—

OBAMA: Said he would be “completely supportive” of late-term abortion restrictions “as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health and life.”

THE FACTS: Obama leaves himself a lot of latitude in this answer. A woman’s “health” has been so broadly interpreted that it can include conditions, including psychological conditions, that are difficult to diagnose or prove. Anti-abortion advocates say that makes the ban meaningless, because it leaves too much subjective judgment in the equation.

—

MCCAIN: “Sen. Obama, as a member of the Illinois state Senate, voted in the Judiciary Committee against a law that would provide immediate medical attention to a child born in a failed abortion. He voted against that.”

OBAMA: “If it sounds incredible that I would vote to withhold lifesaving treatment from an infant, that’s because it’s not true.”

THE FACTS: As a state senator, Obama opposed three legislative efforts, in 2001, 2002 and 2003, to give legal protections to any aborted fetus that showed signs of life. The 2003 measure was virtually identical to a bill President Bush signed into law in 2002 – a bill that passed before Obama was in the U.S. Senate, but one that Obama said he would have supported. The state of Illinois already had a law to protect aborted fetuses born alive and considered able to survive. Among those opposed to the state effort was the Illinois State Medical Society, which argued that the bill would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and expand civil liability for doctors. Critics said the proposed legislation would have undermined the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion, Roe v. Wade, in ways the federal law would not.

—

McCAIN: “Senator Obama talks about voting for budgets. He voted twice for a budget resolution that increases the taxes on individuals making $42,000 a year.”

THE FACTS: The vote was on a nonbinding resolution and did not increase taxes. The resolution assumed that President Bush’s tax cuts would expire, as scheduled, in 2011. If that actually happened, it could mean higher taxes for people making as little as about $42,000.

—

OBAMA: “We can cut the average family’s premium by $2,500 a year.”

THE FACTS: If that sounds like a straight-ahead promise to lower health insurance premiums, it isn’t. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggested cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it’s not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.

—

MCCAIN: Warned a small business owner that he would be fined under Obama’s health care plan if he did not provide health insurance for workers.

THE FACTS: Obama’s health care plan does not impose mandates or fines on small business. He would provide small businesses with a refundable tax credit of up to 50 percent on health premiums paid on behalf of their employees. Large as well as medium-sized businesses that do not offer meaningful coverage or contribute to the cost of coverage would be required to pay a percentage of payroll toward the costs of a public insurance plan. But small businesses would be exempt from that requirement.

—

McCAIN: “We can eliminate our dependence on foreign oil by building 45 nuclear power plants right away.”

THE FACTS: For nuclear power to lower oil dependency would require a massive shift to electric or hybrid-electric cars, with nuclear power providing the electricity. No new U.S. nuclear reactor has been built since the 1970s. Although 15 utilities have filed applications to build 24 new reactors, none is expected to be built before 2015 at the earliest. Turmoil in the credit markets could force cancellation of some of the projects now planned, much less spur construction of 45 new reactors, as reactor costs have soared to about $9 billion apiece.

He is Joe Wurzelbacher, an Ohio man looking to buy a plumbing business who came to symbolize the notion of spreading the wealth in Wednesday night’s third and final presidential debate between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.

Earlier this week, when Wurzelbacher got a chance to speak with Obama during a campaign appearance in Toledo, he told Obama that his tax plan would keep him from buying the business that currently employs him.

Sensing an opportunity during the debate, McCain cited that exchange when the candidates were asked to explain why their economic plans are better than their opponent’s. McCain said Obama’s plan would stop entrepreneurs from investing in new small businesses and keep existing ones from growing.

“Joe wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day. And he wanted to buy the business but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes,” McCain challenged Obama.

“You were going to put him in a higher tax bracket which was going to increase his taxes, which was going to cause him not to be able to employ people, which Joe was trying to realize the American dream,” McCain said.

McCain then looked directly into the television camera and said: “Joe, I want to tell you, I’ll not only help you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and I’ll keep your taxes low and I’ll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees. And I will not stand for a tax increase on small business income.”

Obama denied that was true.

“Not only do 98 percent of small businesses make less than $250,000, but I also want to give them additional tax breaks, because they are the drivers of the economy,” Obama said. “They produce the most jobs.”

So what did Wurzelbacher (pronounced whur-zell-BAHK-er) think about becoming the center of the debate?

“It’s pretty surreal, man, my name being mentioned in a presidential campaign,” he said minutes after hearing McCain utter his name.

Wurzelbacher came up again when the debate turned to a discussion of health care policies. McCain charged that Obama’s plan would fine the company Wurzelbacher wanted to buy; Obama said small businesses were exempt.

“Hey Joe, you’re rich. Congratulations,” McCain said mockingly.

Wurzelbacher said Obama’s reaction left him feeling uneasy.

“I didn’t think much of it the first time I heard it,” Wurzelbacher said, adding that he still thinks Obama’s plan would keep him from buying the business.

About McCain: “He’s got it right as far as I go.”

Even so, Wurzelbacher declined to say which candidate would get his vote on Nov. 4.

“That’s for me and a button to know,” he said.

I think it’s clear Obama won.

Yet I still worry about the Bradley effect – that sneaky predisposition that makes voters SAY they’d vote for a black candidate, but makes them actually vote otherwise. At an MTV forum on the election a couple days ago, the point was made that the percentage of voters who say they’re undecided is equal to or greater than Obama’s lead. Democrats haven’t won yet.

If you yourself are still undecided – and there are only 19 days to go – then I hope you paid particular attention to what they said about judges. Obama very strongly believes that people have a right to privacy that can’t be overturned by referendum – that, in fact, Americans have certain rights that cannot be overturned by a majority.

I believe that. And I believe that the fact that Americans have a right to privacy is one of the fundamental arguments that will win our right to federal marriage, the end of employment discrimination and the military ban, and the extension of our full civil rights.

The good news is that the debate was entertaining television.

Unlike last time, both candidates moved from their stump speeches into an actual conversation about political issues.

And surprisingly, McCain looked in control of the questions and often ended answers with good sound bites. It seemed like Obama was hanging back, letting McCain throw a few punches.

Spending was a perfect example of this. McCain accused Obama of increasing spending, repeated his mantra of a spending freeze and then outlined programs to help schools and create walk-in clinics, all of which cost money.

Obama barely pointed this contradiction out.

Obama’s passivity was particularly problematic when it came to the discussion of Ayers and Acorn. He allowed, even encouraged, time spent on those issues. It wasn’t smart politics and it didn’t help him in the overall debate score.

The truth is, this kind of analysis would have mattered if McCain hadn’t been so immature. He often breathed loudly, made sickening smiles, blinked in disbelief…  I can’t list them all.

He even rolled his eyes.

For voters, especially women voters, this kind of activity is alienating and distracts from any issue debate.

At the end of the day, McCain may have won on the content of the debate. He didn’t win by enough mind you, but he very well might have ended up ahead.

The problem is that he only managed to annoy voters and made this writer, who has never held a negative feeling to McCain personally, feel quite angry towards the man.

If he wants to appear measured and experienced, tonight was a failure. Plain and simple.

Obama, of course, goaded him, stating that he didn’t have the guts to raise the issue in a debate forum. So, even if the McCain campaign had wanted to steer clear of personal attacks, they pretty much don’t have a choice.

It’s a good tactic on the part of the Obama campaign. It makes him look strong, first, and then allows him to highlight the community work he did before ever considering running for President.

This work, conducted with Ayers, has been found clean of any unwanted “lefty” influences or objectives. It’s an argument Obama can’t lose.

McCain has also promised that he won’t raise Reverend Wright, but if personal attacks are the timbre of the conversation, Wright may come up too. Finally, McCain will likely attempt to draw strong links with Obama and the organizing group, Acorn. This, the most dangerous of the three attacks, will require a cool response from the Democratic candidate emphasizing the separation between his Party and the community organizers who engage in get-out-the-vote efforts.

I’m expecting a tame debate. If you support Obama, that’s good news for you.

But with luck the strategists behind McCain who have been floundering for almost a month will wake up, get back on track and brief their candidate with talking points that require an actual discussion about economic solutions.

We could see a real argument about whether cutting corporate taxes increases prosperity for the middle class, about whether forcing health care on small businesses will stifle their growth opportunities and what kind of government programs will help combat that.

Finally, we might see a spit fire McCain paint Obama as a socialist ready to lead the United States into ruin.

Do I think McCain will win any of these arguments? No. The Obama campaign is solidly centrist and polls suggest the American people are happy with government assistance (as always happens in times of economic downturn).

But I get a little excited at the thought that pressure on McCain may make this final debate one worth watching.

Their face-off comes as Obama widens his lead in typically Democratic states and campaigns with an air of optimism about his prospects, while McCain seeks a way to gain ground and finds himself defending traditionally Republican states with less than three weeks left in the race.

“We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change. … As president I intend to act, quickly and decisively,” McCain said Tuesday in battleground Pennsylvania. There, he unveiled new economic proposals and previewed a possible debate strategy: argue that he would be different from Bush and better than Obama.

One day earlier in swing state Ohio, Obama outlined his own economic plan and showed off his own pitch. He suggested that McCain was more of the same and that putting a Democrat in charge was the only way to fix the economy’s woes: “It will take a new direction. It will take new leadership in Washington. It will take a real change in the policies and politics of the last eight years.”

The economic crisis has transformed the campaign over the past month. Obama has built leads nationally and in key states as the turmoil has returned the nation’s focus to the unpopular Bush’s policies. Now, the burden is on McCain to try to reverse his slide.

Wednesday’s debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., is slated to focus entirely on the economy and domestic policy. The candidates will be seated at a table with moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS.

Both presidential contenders have used the previous debates to make and remake their main campaign points, frequently sidestepping direct questions such as how they would have to scale back their long lists of campaign promises in light of the economic crisis.

Advisers for each candidate say he will use the final debate to lay out his vision for the country and promote his economic policies while drawing differences with his opponent.

Character attacks – subtle or not – also could occur.

Obama has increasingly labeled McCain “erratic” and “lurching” during the economic crisis. The words suggest unsteadiness on the part of the 72-year-old four-term senator.

The Democrat’s campaign released a pre-debate memo Tuesday that argued McCain was “ill-equipped” to lead during this crisis, saying his response “has careened, sometimes changing course within the span of a single day.”

McCain has accused Obama of lying about his association with 1960s radical William Ayers, a founder of the violent anti-war group Weather Underground. Obama was 8 years old when the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for a series of bombings. Now a professor in Chicago, Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate session at his home for Obama as he prepared to run for the state Senate. Later, the two worked with the same charity and social-service organizations in Chicago.

McCain has softened that attack on the campaign trail in recent days, though not in his TV and radio ads.

His campaign assailed Obama’s on Tuesday for its “failure to explain how it is that Barack Obama carried on a decade-long friendship with a man who sought to topple the U.S. government through violence.”

McCain has solidified and energized his base of Republican voters, but he has problems with his support among swing-voting independents. A recent Associated Press-GfK Poll showed them divided about evenly between the two candidates. That’s a problem for McCain because Democrats decisively outnumber Republicans this year.

Compounding McCain’s woes, new Quinnipiac University polls released Tuesday showed Obama leading by double digits in two states that Democrat John Kerry won four years ago and that McCain is trying to put in his column this year – Wisconsin and Minnesota – as well as in Michigan, which McCain abandoned earlier this month.

Also, McCain running mate Sarah Palin is being dispatched to campaign in usually Republican states such as Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia to shore up GOP support. However, McCain campaigned Tuesday in Pennsylvania and was to return there Thursday as well, a signal of the campaign’s sustained effort to try to pick off that Kerry-won state offering a whopping 21 electoral votes.

To win, 270 are required.

McCain’s strategy relies on keeping Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana and Ohio in the GOP column along with 21 other Bush-won states that aren’t seriously contested. That would give McCain 260 electoral votes. He would then have to win 10 more votes from a pool of contested states won by Bush (Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico) and Kerry (New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania).

Polls show Obama leading or tied in all of those.