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Gay marriage is not a decisive issue for American voters in the 2004 presidential election, despite national debate over gay rights, according to recent polls.

A CBS News poll found that more than half (52 percent) of all voters would support a candidate who doesn’t share their views on gay marriage. Only 4 percent of voters said gay marriage is the main issue they want to hear about in the election. Nevertheless, the CBS poll said nearly 60 percent of adults say they favor a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a man and a woman, up from 55 percent in December.

Senator John Kerry’s anti–Vietnam war activities have been ignored by his Democratic opponents during his march to an all-but-certain Democratic nomination. Kerry was, after all, a Vietnam war hero before he became an antiwar activist. Democratic opponents did not want to remind antiwar voters that when a youthful Kerry testified before a 1972 Senate committee as head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?”