1.   Few politicians, right or left, have expressed outright homophobia, insisting that the timing of the gay pride event is the problem.

2.   The campaign is timed to precede the pride events in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

3.   They set up booths last summer at a gay pride event in Oakland, the annual Solano Stroll in Berkeley and at the Castro Street Fair in San Francisco.

4.   Today, dozens of large and midsize cities have gay pride events each year, and proposals to ban discrimination against homosexuals appear regularly as local ballot questions.