WASHINGTON — If Phil Burress has his way, Ohio will be a battleground this fall for more than just the presidential candidates. It will be the scene of a moral struggle over the future of marriage, an institution on the front lines of a culture war that some conservatives want to wage in this election year.
Burress, a conservative activist in Cincinnati, is laboring to put before Ohio's voters a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. If he succeeds, Ohio will become one of about a dozen states where this issue has been muscled onto the November ballot.
Conservatives are pushing hard for state action in part because the issue is falling flat in Congress. Although the Senate began discussion Friday of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, it almost certainly will not pass.
But same-sex marriage is roiling the politics of many states and could influence the outcome of the presidential election.
Republican strategists hope -- and Democratic strategists fear -- that the presence of anti-gay-marriage initiatives on the ballots of swing states such as Michigan and Oregon will boost turnout among conservative voters and improve President Bush's chances of winning crucial electoral college votes.
In the last month, activists in four states -- Arkansas, Michigan, Montana and Oregon -- have gathered enough petition signatures to force a vote in November on marriage amendments to their state constitutions. Five other states had already put the issue on their November ballots; two more will vote on amendments before then. Other states may yet take up the topic.
Those state petition drives are welcome successes for conservatives, who say they have found it surprisingly difficult to light a fire at the federal level for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Conservatives seized the issue because they view same-sex marriage as an affront to the sanctity of a fundamental social institution -- and as a political issue that could be as potent an organizing tool as the fight against abortion has been.
Although public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans oppose legal recognition of same-sex marriage, there is less support for amending the Constitution to ban it.
What is more, polls show that only a minority of voters consider the issue a top priority. Many people had not even considered the question until a Massachusetts court five months ago thrust it onto the national agenda by ruling that same-sex couples had a right to marry.
