Wed 14 July, 2004 20:16
By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Evangelical Christian supporters of President George W. Bush hoped their drive to ban same sex marriages would become a defining issue in this year's presidential campaign but so far this has not happened.
Political analysts and advocates on either side of the issue, interviewed as the Senate rejected a White House-backed bid to amend the U.S. Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage, agreed that so far the issue had failed to catch fire in the country at large. The Senate vote on Wednesday likely killed the proposal for this election year.
"It has not caught on. By forcing the Senate vote, supporters of the gay marriage ban may hope to generate enough publicity to make it more of a galvanising issue," said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who studies the evangelical Christian community.
Pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Centre said same sex marriage was not and would not become a top issue in the presidential battle. In one survey he conducted earlier this year, voters ranked it as 24th most important of 25 issues, ahead only of sending a space ship to explore Mars.
"That doesn't mean people don't think it's important but it doesn't have the salience and resonance of the big issues like the economy, Iraq and terrorism," he said.
In one CBS poll in May, only 29 percent said the issue should play a part in the presidential election while 70 percent were opposed.
That kind of data gives Democrats an opening to argue that the Senate should not be spending three days on this issue when so many other pressing matters remain on the agenda.
"This is a waste of time," said California Senator Dianne Feinstein, the first Democratic opponent to speak in Senate debate on the issue on Monday.
'Bout time someone holding a public office noticed that...