Prominent evangelical Christians in Washington have been warning the Bush administration for months that conservative Christians may not have enough motivation to vote this November if the president failed to vigorously support their effort to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
But down in the pews of Western Michigan, a major center of evangelical Protestantism, not everyone is sure that the proposed amendment matters so much.
"For me personally, even though I have a strong religious belief, who am I to say?" said Grant Reed, a police officer, a Republican and a member of the nondenominational evangelical Ada Bible Church in Ada, a suburb of Grand Rapids. "I know my wife would say, `a marriage is between a man and a woman, and sin is sin,' " Mr. Reed said, but he has a good friend from college who is gay.
"I think we have bigger things to worry about than whether two men or two women want to get married," he said.
<snip>
Many conservative churchgoers, including Mr. Smidt of Calvin College, said they felt clear in their opposition to gay marriage but divided on the subject of a constitutional amendment. "I don't like to see it used as a political hammer," he said. "Pushing for an amendment doesn't really energize my support." He added, "It may be that when you add up the votes on this issue, it is not going to add as much as it takes away."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/politics/campaign/28GAYS.html?hpI'm thinking the more people think about this amendment the more they don't like it. Except of course for those who think gay marriage will ruin our soiciety and our schools (!?! from the article)
Bush is an idiot and I wonder if Rove is losing his touch.