I know I've gotten in my share of tussles with folks who want to turn the clock back to 1965 on how our society deals with homosexuality. The point of this thread is, (or at least originally was) what political consequences will follow from the President's statements on gay marriage. He needs the far right to rattle sabers at him, this shows the folks in the middle (whose votes he really needs badly) that he's not overreacting. The thing that makes them the most fearful is the establishment of a theocracy, of the kind that those who decry homosexual "agendas" would be quite comfortable with, if adopted.
Bush knows that every vote in the middle that he can capture is a vote taken away from Howard Dean, if the religious right chooses on principle to not give him their vote, at least he knows it doesn't go to Howie. However, I'm pretty confident that despite all the moaning and griping about what Bush has not given the religious right, they will go into that voting booth remembering all that he did give them, and how very little they got during the eight year reign of Slick.