AMERICAN SEX WARFARE

The Sex warfare breaks out in US election

Gay weddings have triggered a bitter battle between liberals and the powerful morality lobby.

Standing beneath the dome of San Francisco's City Hall last week, amid floral bouquets and wide-eyed onlookers, Josephine and Gieseppina made their vows and were married; they have been together for eight years. Josephine works for the electricity company and Gieseppina works in a store. But their union is more than just an act of love. It is also a political statement. 'How come I live in the land of the free, yet am not free to spend the rest of my life in my own country with the woman I love?' said Josephine. 'If Gieseppina were a man, we wouldn't have this difficulty.' For the past two weeks, 3,500 gay and lesbian couples have traveled to San Francisco, among them the talk show host and actress Rosie O'Donnell and her partner, Kelli Carpenter, as well as others from Australia, Germany and Britain, taking advantage of Mayor Gavin Newsome's decision to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. It is a simple ceremony, presided over by a voluntary army of marriage commissioners, and takes less than five minutes. The move has outraged many in conservative America, not least President George W. Bush, who has vowed to seek a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.

On Friday, 24 ceremonies were performed for gay men and lesbians as a little-known mayor of a small upstate village thrust New York squarely into a dispute that has divided the country in recent weeks. Almost immediately the office of Governor George E. Pataki in New Paltz, 80 miles north of Manhattan, asked Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney-general, to seek a court order to halt the proceedings, state officials said. Spitzer, a Democrat considered a likely candidate for governor in 2006, rejected the efforts of the Republican governor. 'We will not seek an injunction against either the mayor of New Paltz or any other mayor solemnising marriages in the state,' Spitzer said. Whether the weddings would be considered legal under state law is likely to be decided by the courts. The ceremonies in the picturesque university town of New Paltz came as a surprise to many officials, who have been conspicuously silent on the issue, even as it has erupted nationally. The last census counted nearly 50,000 same-sex partner households in New York, and, by some estimates, 500,000 gay residents. Coming with little warning, the ceremonies left many lawyers and politicians struggling to respond, while independent observers and advocates for gay rights said that the move may signal a shift in the scope of the cultural struggles - from big cities to small towns. But it is not just the row over gay marriage that has rocked America. There is a wider culture war, a political war that is pitting traditionalists against liberals. And it is a geographic war that sees the East and West Coasts divided from the vast - and more conservative - heartland. In an election year America's morals and sexual behaviour are at the centre of the political stage. From gay marriage to abortion, from Bush's promotion of sexual abstinence to cracking down on sex on TV, America is fighting a battle over values that is now at the centre of the fight for the White House.

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It is also a bitter battle.

On the streets outside San Francisco City Hall, a rag-tag band of Christian demonstrators, many flown in from other parts of the country, waved banners declaring 'I hate faggots but I love Aids' and hurled abuse at the happy gay couples as they left the building. 'You're hurting the children,' they screamed. Behind the yells and the insults lies a political plan. Though Bush is undoubtedly sincerely conservative in his personal beliefs, putting sexual morals into an election campaign has the effect of energising his conservative base. This is vital for Republican strategists. Conservatives have been rocked by recent moves allowing illegal immigrants to work in the US and the spiralling budget deficit. Moreover, in 2000 strategists estimate at least four million conservative evangelicals failed to vote for Bush. In an election both sides expect to be tight, mobilising that voting bloc could make the difference between winning and losing. So far it looks as if Bush's strategy has scored a bull's-eye. 'I was very proud of the President. This engages the Democrats on their moral values,' said Tim Wildmon, president of the American Families Association.

The AFA, one of America's biggest conservative lobbying groups, is planning a voting drive to get conservatives to register. Wildmon is under no doubt about what he believes is at stake: