ABSTRACT
Images of thousands of gay and lesbian weddings at San Francisco City Hall are purported to have enraged the evangelical community, propelling to the polls many Christian conservatives who failed to vote last time and who, but for gay marriage, would not have voted this time. As with many simple explanations for complex phenomena, the catchy headlines and snappy sound bites provided by the gay marriage story came at the expense of accurate analysis. Abortion, gay rights, and stem cell research are the specific issues most often associated with the moral values agenda. Hilary Rosen of the Human Rights Campaign worried that the election “may have shown us that the change agents for gay marriage are looking too much like a noisy red Ferrari speeding down quiet Main Street.” Gay marriage never emerged as a very important electoral issue relative to other items on the political agenda.
