by Matt Towery of Florida Insider

Will the proposed state constitutional amendment on same-sex marriages pass?

We don't know.

How's that for a dazzling lead?

Sorry, but guessing on Amendment 2 amounts to exactly that, a guess.

Okay, our guess is no, it won't pass. But we've demurred on polling the issue. The pattern on polling amendments in Florida is that the polls more times than not slightly undercount the 'yes' votes. (Probably because poll respondents get impatient with the details of often laborious amendment wordings and lose focus while on the phone.) If that pattern of poll undercounts sustains through Nov. 4, the ban may make the required 60% it needs to become state law.

It should be close, and not necessarily for any exciting reasons to do with bigoted conservatives or licentious liberals. Most proposed constitutional amendments get between 55% and 65% in the Florida. (Which is an endorsement of the new constitutional requirement that proposed amendments must win 60%, not the previous 50% plus one, to pass.)

Across America in recent years, constitutional bans on gay rights have usually served the secondary - or perhaps the primary - purpose of priming the pump of conservative turnout. We've read some analyses of the Nov. 4 vote in Florida that say McCain will benefit from the amendment being on the ballot.

Maybe. But we're more inclined to think McCain will benefit from Barack Obama being on the ballot, though it many not be enough for him to carry off the state's 27 electoral votes. Put another way, turnout is going to be huge, gay rights or not. The question this election cycle may be the reverse of in the past: Will the top of the ticket boost the amendment vote?

The answer is obviously yes. But big turnout by itself is an overrated phenomenon. Who or which side gets the disproportionately big turnout versus the other guy. That's the issue. And the likely answer to that is Obama and the pro-gay rights electorate.

Moneyed activism is overrated too, this time. Little education on gay rights is needed, or at least so voters think. The issue is moral, not financial. It's intuitively understood by most all. People already have their opinions on what's quickly becoming an old-hat issue. The money mostly affects turnout, and that's going to be high already.

The most interesting sidebar to this story is Gov. Charlie Crist - he of the unceasing and largely unfair rumors about his being or not being gay himself. The governor would seem to have the political golf ball all teed up to put the rumors to rest. Combined with his announced marriage plans, sticking to the party line and publicly opposing same-sex marriage would seem to have been the wise (if cynical) strategy; especially considering that Crist backed such bans when he campaigned for governor in 2005-2006. But he has since backed off this GOP fallback position. And he has repudiated his former stance with vague language that suggests…well, never mind.

Being the amoral political analysts that we are, we're less interested in the legalities of gay marriage than the politics of it. And as is often the case, today's winners may be tomorrow's losers, and vice versa.

If the gay marriage ban passes, gay activism in urban areas of Florida will manifest in legal action, sympathetic media attention, and probably some form of civil disobedience.

Remember that cities in places like Miami-Dade, Alachua and Monroe counties have civil ordinances that allow for domestic partnerships. Where a new constitutional amendment would leave those local laws will likely be a matter of one or probably more courts to decide.

But the public noise would remain, and so too would the activism and fundraising on both sides. Because media will be largely sympathetic to the pro-gay lobby, the conservatives will continue to be portrayed as embarrassingly reactionary.

Combine that with a much more important dynamic -- that national entertainment media have largely accepted gay lifestyles as mainstream (see the new Sean Penn film) -- and you've got the ingredients for gays winning the day in the long run, if by compromise with the unbending reality that gays are here, and they are many.

Morality aside, ultimately the issue is more accurately analogous to prohibition than to black civil rights. Gay rights are about behavior. Too many millions of people are gay to ever put this genie back in the bottle.

Where will it end? If it ever does, it will probably be with a gay rights version of Roe vs. Wade from a US Supreme Court gone liberal from Barack Obama appointees. Ultimately, gay rights must be legally a matter of civil rights, one way or the other (and contrary to the argument just above.) It has to be decided thumbs up or thumbs down. And civil or human rights issues end up in federal court, for better or for worse.