First, throw out the militants. Recall that it was Martin Luther King Jr., not Malcolm X, who best articulated the moral soundness of equal rights.

Second, drop the radical smear campaigns aginst Christianity and stop annoyingly disruptive stunts like blocking traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. Angry motorists can become angry voters.

Third, don't allow the Left to subvert your broader fight for respect and equal rights to suit its own narrow purposes. Realize that reasonable people can disagree on issues like gays in the military and AIDS funding.

Finally, and most important, market yourselves as normal people who lead normal lives outside the bedroom. In other words, do not promote your sexual identity as wholly central to your individual character. Doing so only reinforces the impression of gays as perverted and licentious creatures. Posters should depict gays in sport jackets and football jerseys, not leather, chains and high heels.

In short, appeal to American ideals by embracing the American way of life.

CONSERVATIVES must also rethink their objectives. By marginalizing gays, society denies them the chance to affirm community values--the very values we claim to uphold. For example, logic would hold that, as champions of faith and fidelity, AALARM should advocate legal gay marriage. The prospect of legal same-sex marriage would, as Andrew Sullivan has brilliantly argued, "traditionalize" gay life by removing one of the many barriers now preventing gays from entering the social mainstream.

The Right should also realize the not-so-obvious political costs of opposing gay rights. We risk alienating the more conservative, yet more tolerant, generation of younger voters who vote Republican in greater numbers since Ronald Reagan. I also suspect that religiously inspired tirades against tolerance of gays weaken our case against abortion, for they make us seem like Bible-thumping absolutists on a witch hunt. Which is wrong, because there's a big distinction between the two issues. Thanks to groups like AALARM, that distinction is being obscured.

But until gay activists learn their manners, I'll pass on the pink triangles as well as the blue squares.

Conservatives should drop their ridiculous anti-gay stance ...

... but gays need to change their tactics if they hope to gain equal rights and respect.