It was a scorching summer night and we were making out on the couch in his father’s fancy business condo, away from where his parents lived and where he went to school on the East Coast. After two bottles of wine and a few repeats of the same Coldplay CD, he now had his lips against my neck, one arm wrapped behind me, one leg thrown up over my lap. He paused for a moment to mutter, “so you really don’t mind this even though I’m probably voting for McCain?”

OK, stop.

What compelled him to bring it up then is, to this day, beyond me but at this moment it was his first time mentioning who he’d vote for. I’d been talking about the election earlier, and he apparently assumed I was already aware of his politics — and surely it didn’t matter at that point; it’s not as though I was going to hike my pants and drunkenly trot off to my car in the parking lot to sleep it off in the back seat.

Do politics play a role in attraction? I have to admit that for me they sometimes do. They have a bigger impact on relationships that could become long-term, and if all else is undecided, a guy’s political views — especially if they veer toward racist, sexist, or confusingly anti-gay — will doubtlessly push me over the edge.

That covers mainly the broadest differences in perspective; if he’s singing Bush’s praises I will think twice about him, but I’m not going to quiz someone over whether he thinks Social Security should be privatized. On the other hand, I have a friend who re-defined his sexual orientation as vegansexual — meaning he is attracted solely to other vegans, which is quite a narrow request. He doesn’t care if his partners are male or female, or even transgendered for that matter; his sole requirement is that they refrain from eating or using animal products. I think he breaks his own rule often; it’s more of a novel term than an actual boundary, but the concept of vegansexuals, which existed long before my friend adopted it, taps into the general idea that we’re more attracted to those who are morally and philosophically similar to ourselves.

That has to be truest for those whose views are so precise or developed that we feel like aliens in our own world. Vegans I know tend to be quite passionate about their concern for animals, while the best polls I can find (and there aren’t many) show that less than 2 percent of the population is vegan (myself not included). Vegetarians (myself included if you make an exception for fish) are a little more numerous at around five percent, though I can count on one hand the number I’ve come across in the gay community in my lifetime.

Rare as meat-shunners may be, I’ve run across guys who disclosed in their Online profiles or otherwise that they’re distinctively un-attracted to vegetarians, or more broadly to “liberals,” or any other label for their opposing end of the political spectrum. I’ve also seen profile photos of shirtless men proudly touting semi-automatic weapons, which are surely intended to communicate a political background as much as their interest in guns as a hobby. And while I’m not particularly ignited in either direction by debates around gun control, I do avoid those people who advertise their gun collections as the first thing I should know about them — we probably don’t have anything in common.

In most real-life cases, political views are tougher to decipher than the “definitely liberal” tag on a Facebook page, but we all still come up with sneaky ways of advertising our basic underlying principles. Dreadlocks on a white guy are a no-brainer that the community he comes from is both flagrantly liberal and likely devoid of racial minorities. Piercings and outrageous hair colors often — though not always — indicate an attitude that is too-cool-to-care about voting. There’s also the telltale crew cut, which even on gay men tends to indicate a conservative lean.

I live in a decidedly liberal college town, which I stayed in after graduating since I know so many people here and had no immediate better option. It’s a town that is pro-environment and also staunchly pro-gay, and yet I’ve been shocked to find that people in the state — even gay men — wrinkle their nose in disgust when I say where I live, assuming I came just for barefooted drum circles or to waste away on a diet of shaved carrots and sprouts. Do they not know there’s a school here? With, would you imagine, a football team even, hardly a hippie utopia! Others on the opposite end of the spectrum wrinkle their nose and tell me my town is racist, indicated by the near total predominance of white people and lack of affordable housing, which, again, has nothing to do with why I moved in. But I have little doubt that those views trickle into judgments on me or my dateability.

This November, fully twenty-seven percent of GLBT people voted for John McCain, according to exit polls of those willing to self-identify as gay or lesbian. That’s nearly one in three, up from a fifth who voted for Bush. The Evangelical Right might assume that the “gay agenda” is common to all of us radical Leftist queers, who, they surmise, are all cut from the same mold. But those of us here are finding we can’t assume all our views are shared by our peers. We might not ourselves vote the same party all the time, and it’s going to be inevitable that we run across a GOP-leaning libertarian or two or or even a full-blown Born Again “ex-gay” sneaking away for some Friday night sex with plans to repent Sunday morning.

So back on the couch with my Republican friend, who went on to elaborate that he would have flipped Democrat for Hillary Clinton (at least he’s not a total Right Winger), I decide not to make a big deal about his views. The alcohol helped. I think I said, “well you have some time to think about it” and left it at that. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t file him away in my brain just a little differently from then on, with a slightly more physical, slightly less intellectual or emotional appreciation of the moment.