When Matt Foreman, who leads America's oldest national gay rights group, lists the most pressing issues facing his members, gay marriage is not at the top of his list.
Instead, he points to employment discrimination, fair housing, safety for gay students and a host of domestic issues, such as child custody rights.
"If you can't get a job, or you lose your job, or you can't find a place to live, most other things seem much less significant," Foreman said.
Spring weddings are planned in Massachusetts and gay couples in San Francisco are lining up for illicit marriage licenses, but the furor that has accompanied it all has some gay activists feeling a blush of regret at the altar.
While support for the right to marry is universal among mainstream gay rights groups, some activists fear growing backlash will fuel passage of the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that President Bush endorsed Tuesday.
If it passes - a difficult feat - marriage for gays could be out of reach for decades, advocates say. Some also bemoan the money and manpower it will take to battle the amendment in Congress and in the states, at a time when gays have yet to attain less flammable rights in most states.
Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, frequently speaks to donors and activists around the country. One question he hears often, he said, is, "Why do we have to talk about marriage right now? We don't even have a civil rights bill in our state, yet we're all having to mobilize around marriage.'
"And my response is that if I, or if the task force, were in charge, we would not be fighting the marriage fight right now. We would be fighting it down the road. Because we know as every year goes by, public support for the freedom to marry grows."
Marriage is the holy grail of social validation, advocates say, a passport to benefits generally not available to gay or unmarried heterosexual couples, from rights of survivorship to protection under divorce law.
But it also is highly divisive. Polls show Americans have become more tolerant toward gay rights in recent years, and some surveys suggest the population is split on whether gays should be allowed to enter civil unions.
On actual marriage for gays and lesbians, however, Americans appear solidly opposed. A National Annenberg Election Survey released late Tuesday found that 64 percent are against a law allowing same-sex marriage, while just 30 percent would support it.
The fate of a constitutional amendment banning it, however, is far less certain: The Annenberg survey found that just 41 percent support an amendment, while 48 percent oppose it.
"Gay is like the new terrorism almost, or at least the new Monica Lewinsky as far as political issues go," said Daniel Lancaster, 27, of Tampa, a gay rights activist who is ambivalent about same-sex marriage. "We'd have a lot better luck bringing this about in five, 10 years in the future, which is where realistically I saw it."
Although it's hot now, this battle has been simmering since Hawaii allowed gay and lesbian couples to share health and other benefits in 1993. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as between one man and one woman, and 38 states have passed similar laws.
Then in 2000, Vermont began allowing same-sex couples to enter civil unions, which afforded many of the financial benefits of marriage. But it was November's ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordering the Legislature to codify same-sex marriage that pushed the decision further and faster than many activists had expected, or wanted.
Same-sex marriage has become the rallying cry for conservative religious political groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, and Bush had been under growing pressure from those groups to declare his support for an amendment banning it.
"The whole situation is unfortunate, and unnecessary, as far as the conflicts being played out politically," said Frederick Ulmer, vice president of the Pinellas County chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay conservative political group. "I wish it hadn't happened in an election year."
Tuesday, gay activists complained that antigay crusaders, not gay advocates, have kept the issue at the forefront. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the first openly gay member of Congress, noted the Massachusetts ruling followed a suit filed by six same-sex couples, and "it wasn't a strategic decision of a movement."
Lancaster, an advertising salesman for the Watermark, a bimonthly magazine in Tampa geared toward the gay and lesbian community, said, "It's almost like opponents initiated the spark, that they decided to nip it in the bud now rather than wait for it to gain the momentum it would gain five to 10 years in the future."
Foreman, of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said he had expected gay marriage to evolve more slowly, the way other "culturally contentious" issues in America have. "Look back now at the bitter debate around desegregation. No respectable person now argues that segregation was a good thing, or should still be around," Foreman said. "There were contentious debates around interracial marriage. Around even married couples having access to contraception.
"There have been so many issues that our country has worked through in a judicious, public debate and legislative process, (and) at the end there's a national consensus. We all thought this was the way it would unfold."
