I’m a libertarian who hasn’t yet decided who to vote for, and for the past week or so, I’ve been offering the commenters on my blog the chance to persuade me. Now that Daniel Drezner has gone Kerry, there aren’t many of us undecided libertarians left. The responses have ranged from thoughtful critiques of both candidates’ foreign and domestic policies, to one commenter who implied, at great length, that if I voted for Kerry I would never, ever get laid again.

This does give pause. But I’m inspired by the example of one of my most beloved friends, who has decided to vote for Bush. She was persuaded by the debate in the comments section of my blog, but that isn’t what inspires me. The truly inspirational thing is that she is gay. Does she like Bush’s position on gay marriage? Hell no. But she isn’t voting on gay marriage. She’s voting on national security.

Now, you may or may not think that Bush is the right guy, national-security-wise. You may even think that gay marriage is a more important issue to the nation than the foreign policy questions that the last four years have raised, though you’d get some pushback from me. But my friend decided her vote based on what she thought was most important for the country, even though Bush’s stand on an issue that’s important to her personally is worse than Kerry’s.

That’s why I don’t understand complaints from the left that low-income evangelicals don’t vote their economic interest, or from the right that high-income democrats are funding the party of redistribution. We should rejoice every time we see someone who is voting on ideology, rather than merely supporting the candidate who puts the most money in their pocket.

And so even if it means a lifetime of celibacy, I’ll try to take the high road, and vote my conscience, rather than my . . . er . . . well, you know what I mean. Unfortunately, that just makes the decision all the harder.