If Tuesday I woke up with a grin at Bush's ill-conceived announcement, today I wanted to weep upon sitting down to read my daily blogs. It seems that John Kerry has indicated his support for an amendment to the Massachusetts state constitution banning gay marriage.

Now, at first I misread some of the commentary in the blogosphere--as did some of the people I read, because my first impression was that Kerry had indicated he'd support a version of /Bush's/ amendment authored in Massachusetts. A bit more digging and a phone call to the Kerry campaign later, and I'm corrected and a little mollified--but not much.

As near as I can divine it, Kerry's stance seems to be that he agrees with Bush completely--he believes that marriage is for a man and a woman, and that there ought to be an allowance for civil unions--he just doesn't think there should be an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, and that the states should decide.

I didn't like Kerry very much before. After Lieberman dropped out, I considered him the worst of the "serious" candidates, and now that it's down to him and Edwards, I'm resigned to pulling the lever for him without much enthusiasm just to get Bush out of office, since an Edwards surge seems unlikely. And anyone who knows me, knows that I'm committed to Anyone But Bush in November. But Kerry's spineless, discriminatory stance on this--ideologically indistinguishable from Bush's--has caused some serious soul-searching this morning. Forget support--Kerry doesn't have my support and never did. Let's talk about my vote. Can I vote for Kerry this fall, even if I /know/ that any other vote or abstinence thereof is effectively a vote for Bush?

I just don't know. This issue is too critical to waffle on--this is this generation's civil rights war.

What I do know, now, is how the Nader voters felt in 2000.