The Summer of Hate rolls on

I love the smell of pandering in the morning.

Undeterred by a decisive defeat in the Senate, House Republicans are moving ahead with a vote on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, forcing lawmakers to take a stand just months before the election.

The vote, scheduled for Tuesday, will occur in a week devoted to several priorities of social conservatives — what House GOP leaders call their "American values agenda." Also on tap are a pledge protection bill and several Republican-backed stem cell bills.

President Bush, under some pressure from conservatives to take a more active role in promoting their issues, spoke out for the gay marriage amendment several times before it was rejected in the Senate last month.

Changing the Constitution is necessary, he said in one of his weekly radio addresses, because "activist judges and some local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage in recent years."

Defeat of the amendment is once again a near-certainty. The Senate fell 11 votes short of the 60 votes needed just to advance the proposal to a yes-or-no decision. Two years ago, just before another election, the House came up some 40 votes shy of the two-thirds majority required to advance a constitutional amendment.

Opponents of same-sex marriage claimed success anyway. They argue that the 2004 vote was part of a successful campaign to rally conservatives and help win Bush's re-election.

Answer me this, conservative Christians: whom would Jesus scapegoat?