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tion. And make no mistake: For many, these philosophical convictions mean far more to their decision-making process than any economic plan or budget.
• In Columbus, Ohio, Kathy Tarrier would be much more conflicted about voting Democratic over Republican if fiscal issues alone guided her. Like many, she'd like to see a reduction in congressional earmarks and spending cuts for certain social programs.
• But Tarrier is gay and a mother of two children with her partner of 25 years, and the positions of the two parties on the issue closest to her heart couldn't be more disparate.
• The platform GOP convention-goers adopted last week backs a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman, a position Romney supports. The Democratic platform that will be presented at the convention this week states the opposite. It endorses same-sex marriage, as Obama did earlier this year, and also calls for the repeal of a federal law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples.
• "It doesn't feel good to be a second-class citizen," says Tarrier, 52, a systems administrator at the Franklin County public defender's office. "I've had people spit at me, and I've heard the slurs. Yeah, I want changes. I want the same civil rights as everybody else, as an individual and as a couple."
• Tarrier's decision to vote for Obama rests not only in the parties' specific policy positions but in the principles that they represent. For her, it means the difference between a country that is inclusive or exclusive, one that can evolve and embrace change or one that regresses to something that feels more comfortable somehow.
• The vision guiding her this election year: "I don't want to see what I consider the nation going backward."
• Still others are very much looking to the past as they assess the election and their own desires for which direction the country heads.
• Patricia Knight, 65, wants to go back to the ideals she was raised with as a girl growing up in the 1950s on Oyster Bay in Long Island, N.Y. To her that means showing respect: for one's elders, for oneself, for the Constitution and for life by once again outlawing abortion. "America was a better America before," says the retired kitchen designer who leads her local Republican women's club in Virginia Beach, Va.
• Knight says she isn't afraid of change -- for example, she doesn't oppose the morning-after pill in cases of rape and incest. But, for her, Obama's vision is one that brings too much change too fast.
• For Lee Levin, co-founder of the Broward Tea Party in south Florida, looking

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