The Bush era has been tough on the gay rights lobby, to put things mildly. The president’s support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, by some accounts, was the wedge issue that allowed the president to win his close 2004 re-election. And the anti-gay slur by conservative pundit Ann Coulter at this month’s Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington dramatizes anew the clear split between most of the conservative movement and the campaign for gay equality.

But gay activists are regrouping, now that the Bush administration continues to lose popular support and a Democratic Congress is in power. The first priority, they say, is to move two pieces of long-stalled legislation targeting hate crimes and workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians. Getting both bills enacted — a goal that leaders say is well within their reach — would mark the gay rights movement’s first substantial legislative victories in Washington this decade.

“We are no longer on the defensive, spending time and resources fighting the federal marriage amendment,” says Allison Herwitt, legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest gay rights group. “We can now pursue proactive legislation.”

Eleven years ago the Senate rejected, by just one vote, legislation that would have outlawed bias against homosexuals in most American workplaces; other bids to revive the bill during the GOP’s reign on Capitol Hill came up empty. Legislation that would make crimes motivated by hatred of gays a federal offense have come closer to becoming law. The House included such language in a measure targeting sex offenders in 2005, but the language was abandoned later in the process. The Senate has added hate-crime amendments to bills in 1999, 2000 and 2004, but each time the provisions have been dropped in conference negotiations with the House.

Now House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, is preparing to introduce a bill federalizing gay hate crimes and providing resources to law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to target such cases. Its backers say a floor vote is expected this spring.

Gay rights activists also believe that the job- discrimination bill could be on the House floor as early as this summer. It will be introduced soon by Democrats Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Republicans Deborah Pryce of Ohio andChristopher Shays of Connecticut. Last month, the HRC announced that it had joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to marshal stories of workplace bias as part of the bill’s lobbying push.

Democrat Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts will likely captain the effort behind both bills in the Senate.

The Human Rights Campaign also is looking to move legislation that would permit employees and companies to make pretax payments toward a same-sex domestic partner’s medical costs. That bill will be sponsored, in all likelihood, by Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington and two senators, Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Gordon H. Smith of Oregon.

To kick off the new legislative agenda, a group of 300 HRC members came to Washington from around the country for a lobbying day this month — the group’s largest turnout ever, according to spokesman Brad Luna. Among the activists was former Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, who was wounded in Iraq in 2003. He joined with Democratic Rep. Martin T. Meehan of Massachusetts when Meehan introduced a bill to end the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gays in the military.

That same week, New York’s Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the group’s board. Another Democratic presidential contender, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, is scheduled to speak at an HRC dinner in Los Angeles next week.

Such overtures from the presidential field underline a newly upbeat mood in gay activist circles, Herwitt says: “There is a real excitement in the community. They are motivated.”

Another sign of the times: Social conservatives are already talking as though they will be playing defense. Gay lobbyists are “emboldened by the results in the last election, and they are very well-funded,” says Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs with the Family Research Council. “On an issue like hate crimes, there are enough Republicans that it could very easily pass.”