The Issues: Same-Sex Marriage

CBS News Looks At Where Bush And Kerry Stand On Key Issues

(CBS)  CBS News continues a month-long series titled "What Does It Mean To You?" focused on where the presidential candidates stand on major issues and how a vote for one or the other candidate might affect average people's lives.

In this report, CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod looks at a controversial social issue: same-sex marriage.

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Twenty-three-year-old Ry Russo-Young is a family values advocate: her family, their values.

"My family life had its ups and downs," she says. "But for the most part, I grew up in a very well-adjusted happy healthy home."

Meet the parents: Robin Young and Sandy Russo, a lesbian couple for 25 years. Today, they're getting married.

But since lesbians can't marry in their home state of New York, Robin and Sandy had to leave the country to get married, over the border to Canada.

If you believe the polls, forget about abortion, forget about gun control; the number-one social issue this election year is gay marriage. And Americans are clear on it: against the idea of gay marriage, 2 to 1.

But they're even more strongly against the idea of banning it with a constitutional amendment.

President Bush is clear: against gay marriage, for a constitutional amendment.

"If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment," Mr. Bush says.

Democratic candidate John Kerry is also against same sex marriage, but opposes the ban.

"I think you need to have civil unions," he says. "That's my position."

So if both candidates stand against gay marriage, why are the Russo-Youngs holding a fundraiser for Kerry?

Sandy Russo says that in terms of separating these two men, the constitutional amendment is an "enormous" issue.

"One clearly says I'm open to it. The other one is saying, let's go back to the Stone Age," says Russo.

The constitutional amendment is also exactly why Jan LaRue, of the Concerned Women for America, supports Mr. Bush: families are headed by a mother and a father, plain and simple.

"If government licenses same-sex marriage, it is saying it's equal to traditional marriage. And children, therefore, will think that this is acceptable conduct. And it's not," says LaRue.

Ry Russo-Young hopes, sooner or later, same-sex marriages will become a fact of life.

"They want to live happily ever after," she says, as her parents exchange vows.

This election could tell a lot about whether it's sooner or later.