The point is not that the Democrats are making gay marriage a campaign issue, it is that the Republicans have made it more important than the capture of the most wanted man in the world.

Huh?

Bigfoot, your "question" has already been dealt with. The billboard was not pushing same-sex marriage, it was mocking GOPpers for trying to make it a central issue.

Can you name any Democrat who has made advocating same-sex marriage rights a centerpiece of their campaign? Or even a big part, hell, even a small part, of their campaign?

Such advocacy simply is not part of the Dems "political strategy."

However, I would like you to source your claim that "nearly 100 percent of Republicans ... and about 70 percent of Democrats" oppose same-sex marriage. The closest I can come to making sense of that is a Newsweek poll from last week, which reported 9% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats (and 24% overall) favoring "FULL marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples" (emphasis in original).

However, that poll also included the option of civil unions, which gained the support of 27% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats (26% overall) - meaning 36% of Republicans and 57% of Democrats favor legal recognition of same-sex couples.

In fact, combine those two categories and, the poll reports, you have 50% favoring legal recognition and only 40% opposed (the rest said "unsure").

If that is the poll you relied on, by dumping "favor civil unions," "oppose any recognition," and "unsure" into one pile, you have seriously distorted the results.

In line with that, in July a poll done for the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life asked people if they favored allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally. Some 35% said yes. And when pollsters adjusted the question to in effect include civil unions (which they described as "legal agreements with each other that would give them many of the same rights as married couples"), 52% approved.

While support for same-sex marriage is a minority position (a significant minority, to be sure, but still a minority), support for some form of legal recognition is not.

And here's one last thing for you to chew on: Well within my lifetime and perhaps yours, opposition to interracial marriage was higher than opposition to same-sex marriage is today. In fact, it wasn't until 1967 that laws against interracial marriages were struck down once and for all.