The Wall Street Journal's John Fund has an excellent essay on the potential backlash that the gay marriage issue in San Francisco may cause:

Reading media reports of the 3,000-plus gay couples who have taken out marriage certificates in San Francisco make the mayor's civil disobedience look like a cross between a civil-rights triumph and a love story. That's because the vast majority of journalists support same-sex marriage, including right-of-center pundits such as David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan and Jim Pinkerton. But Democratic politicians know better. California's Barbara Boxer, one of the Senate's most liberal members, startled her base last week when she announced she opposed changing state law to recognize same-sex marriage. A spokesman for the senator said she believes the state's domestic partnership law provides gay couples with "full rights and responsibilities."

Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the first openly gay member of Congress, says he warned Mayor Newsom that his stunt would fail legally and would also force more-mainstream politicians to support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He is aware there has been a backlash since the Massachusetts court decision, and San Francisco's civil disobedience may accelerate that. A December poll by CBS and the New York Times found that 61% of Americans opposed gay marriage, up from 55% in July. Opposition to gay rights was the highest since the survey began asking the question in 1992.

The poll found that blacks and Hispanics--core Democratic voting blocs--were especially loath to embrace same-sex marriage. Jesse Jackson told a Harvard Law School audience last week that he supports "equal protection under the law" for gays, but he did not endorse full marriage rights and questioned the analogy between gay rights and civil rights: "Gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution and did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote." He warned the issue was treacherous territory for Democrats in 2004 because it was part of a "Republican tactical strategy to distract from such issues as foreign policy and education."

As I've said every day for the last week, Bush would be very smart to shut up about this issue and let Kerry go on record with his view.