Polls in the toilet? Next election looking bad for the Republicans? Everybody fixated on that war thing? Time to trot out that gay marriage thing.

President Bush is beginning a major push for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, part of a new campaign to appease cultural conservatives who say he and his party abandoned their issues after the 2004 elections.

Mr. Bush plans to declare strong support for the amendment — scheduled for a vote in the Senate next week — in his radio address on Saturday, and at an event at the White House on Monday with conservative activists and religious leaders, White House officials said Friday.

Taken together, the events will be the first time Mr. Bush has so strongly promoted his opposition to same-sex marriage since his re-election campaign nearly two years ago. Democrats accused the White House of trotting out a reliable hot-button issue to help soothe and re-energize disgruntled conservative voters five months before the midterm Congressional elections. "Everybody's going to see through it," said Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

But, in a new twist this year, some conservative activists expressed similar cynicism. They said Mr. Bush and the Republicans in Congress had a long way to go to convince social conservatives that they viewed the issue as anything but a politically convenient tool that they picked up only when they needed to motivate their core voters.

Dean and the conservatives are agreeing on something! If this does not signal the end of the Bush administration's influence then I don't know what does.

You have to feel bad for the lesbians and homosexuals. Every time anybody wants to get the church groups to get out the vote they start talking about how gross gay sex is.

Could you imagine if this same tactic were used on old people?

"Oh gross! I just saw the nastiest thing in the park!

"What?"

"I just saw these too seventy year olds rubbing up against each other and kissing like they had no shame!"

"Eeeeew!"

"I mean why can't those people just control their urges? I mean I don't need to see that! There might have been small children around!"

"There should be a law."

"Yeah! You are right! We should write our congressman and have them draft a new law forbidding old people from making out or having, eeeeww, sex!"

"I agree, that is just disgusting!"

"We will teach those nasty old farts not to love each other when we find it wrong. We will make a law forbidding it!"

This administration has no shame!