Washington Post reporter David Von Drehle unveiled a long Post Magazine article this weekend discovering (among other things) ignorance in the Red States. He found an old lady in Oklahoma named Joyce Smith who he clearly thought had her curlers on too tight: “She was too polite to say, in so many words, that she felt John Kerry was a man of bad morals. Instead, she put it this way: ‘When Kerry said he was for abortion and one-sex marriages, I just couldn’t see our country being led by someone like that.’” Von Drehle felt compelled to “correct” the woman for the record: “Later, I double-checked what Kerry had said on those subjects. During his campaign, he opposed same-sex marriage and said that abortion was a private matter. But Joyce Smith heard it the way she heard it, and voted the way she voted….”

Von Drehle did not want to consider Kerry’s actual voting record instead of just his campaign-trail chatter. Kerry may not have said he opposed what proponents call “gay marriage,” but he has a perfect 100 percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-left lobby, including his 1996 vote against the Defense of Marriage Act. Kerry is also a regular 100-percenter for NARAL Pro-Choice America. His campaign did not say abortion was a “private matter,” which is still a pro-choice position, but as Kerry spokesman David Wade put it, “John Kerry’s personal feelings about [Catholic] church doctrine are a private matter. He’s made it clear that he’s committed to upholding a woman’s right to privacy, and that he wants an America where abortion is safe, legal and rare.”