“Gay rights moved to the forefront of the presidential campaign today after Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s announcement that he opposes a November ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage in California. In a letter to San Francisco’s Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, the presumptive presidential nominee said he opposed ‘the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution’ and similar efforts in other states. … Early polls show that while the Prop. 8 race is likely to be a close contest in California, many of the young and liberal voters who back Obama are strongly opposed to the same-sex marriage ban. But those groups of voters don’t have nearly as much clout elsewhere in the nation. A CBS poll taken early in June showed that only about 30 percent of American voters favored legalizing marriage for same-sex couples.” (07/01/08)