McCain, Obama quietly take opposing stands on California's same-sex marriage ban measure

The muted announcements -- McCain supports the proposed ban, Obama opposes it -- will have little if any bearing on the presidential contest in a state that strongly favors Democrats.

Beyond California, though, the ramifications are serious -- especially for McCain. Advisors hope his support for the November measure will help appease socially conservative evangelicals long wary of the Arizona senator.

But like McCain's other recent gestures to align himself with the Republican Party's conservative wing, it risks turning off the independent voters whose support is crucial to his White House aspirations.

McCain's support for the measure to put a same-sex marriage ban in the California Constitution is part of his effort to reconcile with conservative evangelicals. The senator who once branded the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" has pledged to put more conservatives on the federal bench and has reaffirmed his support for letting states outlaw abortion.

Already looming large are his support for expanding President Bush's tax cuts, keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for years and lifting the federal ban on offshore oil drilling. All of those pose potential trouble for McCain in a race against a Democrat who has shown strong appeal among independents.

So McCain stepped quietly into California's emotionally charged gay-marriage campaign.

He announced his support last week for the ballot measure, known as Prop. 8, in an e-mail to protectmarriage.com, a group promoting it.

"I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona," he said.

For independents, polls show, gay marriage and other social issues have dropped in priority as they have begun to fret over such pressing matters as surging gas prices, home foreclosures and joblessness, along with the war in Iraq.

Even in 2004, when the initial burst of same-sex weddings in Massachusetts and San Francisco made the issue prominent in the presidential campaign, relatively few independents cared much about it.