CLEVELAND HEIGHTS - Mayor of one of Ohio's most liberal cities, Edward Kelley works closely with gay-rights activists.
Yet looking ahead to Election Day in this crucial swing state, he has blunt advice for them on the topic of gay marriage: Tread lightly.
If I were in the gay and lesbian community and wanted John Kerry elected
I wouldn't be pushing this issue said Kelley, a self-described conservative Democrat. All you're going to do is help (President) Bush get re-elected.
Kelley may prove right: statewide polls show Ohio voters opposing gay marriage by a 3-1 ratio.
But gay and lesbian leaders in the Cleveland area are reluctant to back off on an issue that has galvanized their traditionally cautious ranks as never before.
It's daunting - but what better thing to be working on? said Mary Zaller, co-director of the Lesbian Gay Community Center of Greater Cleveland. Largely because of this marriage stuff our community is growing up
coming out of its adolescence and saying
'We're here' ... We can't be seen as backing down.
The most eye-catching developments on the gay marriage front have unfolded in relatively liberal states along the East and West coasts - Massachusetts' high court ordering same-sex marriages to commence in May; local officials defiantly performing such marriages in California, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey and New York.
However, debate also has flared in the heartland, providing a dramatic election-year barometer of the political clout of gay-rights advocates and those who oppose them.
This will be the issue of the election - categorically the issue that will decide Ohio
said David Zanotti, who heads a conservative public-policy group called the Ohio Roundtable.
But it's not the issue the paid political consultants will tell their candidates to focus on. They are so far removed from the grass roots that they just don't get it.
Until this year, Ohio had been one of 13 states without a recent law explicitly banning same-sex unions.
In February, however, Republican Gov. Bob Taft signed one of the toughest bans yet, containing an extra provision barring state employees from obtaining benefits for their unmarried partners.
Ohio gay-rights groups, by contrast, lack the political muscle to advance state legislation.
A few years ago, they even failed to persuade officials in Lakewood, a Cleveland suburb with a large gay population, to offer domestic-partner benefits to city employees.
The gay community here is incredibly closeted
very conservative
said Jack Hart, an activist who worked in Boston, New York and Washington before moving to Cleveland. Sometimes I feel I've stepped back into the '50s.
However, Hart said attitudes are changing because of the nationwide campaign to broaden rights for same-sex couples.
In January, Cleveland Heights implemented a domestic-partner registry - the first in the nation approved directly by voters.
The measure won 55 percent support in last November's election thanks in large part to door-to-door canvassing by gay activists and their straight supporters.
Among the canvassers was Katy Alex, 24, a graduate student in neuroscience at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University who knew no other gays or lesbians while growing up in upstate New York and had never engaged in politics.
I was always the girl who didn't know who the vice president was
she said.
Now I feel I've stumbled on a whole new side of myself.
Engaging voters in conversations about gay relationships was the key to winning support, Alex said.
People were willing to listen; even people who were against us were respectful.
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