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Then the Pope harshly condemned gay marriage and urged public officials to vote against our legal unions. Perhaps if we wanted to marry 12 year old boys instead of adults the Pontiff would have remained silent on the issue or simply covered it up. The writing is clearly on the wall - conservatives are going to do what they can to derail the GLBT community's progress on marriage. If passed, the dangerous Constitutional amendment would be nothing short of a nuclear bomb on our attempts to legally protect our families. Therefore, it is important that our national organizations be prepared to go nuclear on our political "allies" if they desert us, even if that means mutually assured destruction. Our leading political organizations have to be unusually bold and immediately make it clear to all politicians that support from the GLBT community is contingent upon rejecting this dangerous amendment. To paraphrase George W. Bush, "You're either with us, or against us." This means that our national groups should not only threaten to withhold support temporarily, but forever. Those who even flirt with embracing this amendment should be put on notice that they will receive the political death penalty with no pardons. Read: No more lucrative fundraisers or politically powerful endorsements. No more hard working GLBT volunteers. And no more support via direct mail or the Internet.
Groups such as the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force can first relay this deadly serious message to each Democratic presidential candidate. These powerful politicians can set the tone of how the entire Democratic Party responds to this crisis. Any candidate that doesn't unequivocally and unambiguously state his or her objection this constitutional amendment should be automatically disqualified from receiving support. Ditto in Congress. Supporting hate crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is not enough. Any member of Congress who doesn't state early opposition to this amendment should automatically be given a Zero on HRC's next legislative report card and all funds should immediately dry up. Statewide groups should also be prepared to throw rowdy demonstrations in front of the offices of legislators who speak in favor of this Constitutional amendment. This can't happen in three months - it has to happen now, before the Constitutional amendment gains any more steam. The bar for passing a constitutional amendment is quite high and the procedure is daunting - even for the well-organized right wing. The amendment would have to be approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate and ratified by 38 states to become part of the Constitution. However, we can't afford to let the degree of difficulty give us a false sense of security and lead to a lethal political paralysis.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 sodomy ruling means the law no longer views us as misbehaving heterosexual criminals with a bad homosexual habit, but whole human beings whose pursuit of happiness should be protected, even respected. Having won the war over the right to exist, we are now left to fight battles over our human dignity. The fact that we no longer have to worry about simply surviving or being arrested means we have more political leverage than I think our community realizes. To win elections, many Democrats and moderate Republicans need us as much as we need them and they should not take our support for granted. If our "friends" abandon us on this crucial issue, I suggest that this year we take away our large political contributions and use them instead to enjoy relaxing vacations in Canada - a country where politicians who call themselves friends don't act like fiends. 
Wayne Besen is the author of ^Anything But Straight: Unmasking the
Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth, ~due out in October. He is also
a former spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign. wbesen@aol.com
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Sen. Rick Santorum supports the push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages 
The Catholic Church, the largest denomination in the United States, will put its weight behind an anti-gay constitutional amendment