Let me make sure I’m getting this.

The budget deficit is rising like blood pressure. Osama bin Laden is skipping around freely. American soldiers die in Iraq every day.

So naturally, next year’s election will turn on the pressing issue of gay marriage.

At least that seems to be the fondest wish of cultural conservatives. Ever since the Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws in Texas earlier this year, they’ve been salivating about using what they see as the nuclear weapon of wedge issues in the election of 2004.

Now the Massachusetts Supreme Court throws more red meat into the lion’s cage in the form of a ruling affirming the right to same-sex marriage. As Sandy Rios, president of the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told The Associated Press, “This is going to be an election issue that they cannot ignore. We’ll ask the question and they’ll have to answer it.”

It is — you’d have to be blind not to see this — a classic act of misdirection, playing on voters’ fears to get them looking elsewhere. Sadly, it stands a good chance of working.

It’s hard to remember in the current climate, but Americans were not sweating gay marriage before the Supreme Court ruling. Nearly half of us approved of the idea, in fact. That number has since dropped below 40 percent.

I have a hunch the problem is “marriage.” Meaning not the institution, but the word.

Consider the curbside reaction as reported this week in the New York Times. Many people opposed gay marriage, using words like “repugnant.” Yet, when those same people were asked their opinion of gay “civil unions,” they echoed the opinion of Kathryn Czapinski, a 59-year-old nurse who said: “I have no objection. If they want to recognize civil unions for gays, giving them insurance benefits, things like that, I’m not against that.”

Now granted, a civil union, under the formulation adopted by the state of Vermont, is not technically the same as a marriage. It is, rather, a legal arrangement that allows gay and lesbian couples many of the same rights and responsibilities as married heterosexuals. It’s marriage with training wheels.

Still, it’s close enough to the real thing that one wonders why a Kathryn Czapinski finds the one tolerable and the other violently offensive.

There are, I suspect, two reasons. One, because “marriage” suggests an equivalence that makes some heterosexuals squirm. And two, because it implies religious sanction. “Gay marriage,” to this way of thinking, would force a minister or rabbi to solemnize that which runs counter to his beliefs.

But it’s a false fear. No one has sought, and no one “should” seek, anything of the kind. That’s not where the issue lies. “Marriage” is a religious matter, but it is also — indeed, for some people, it is only — a legal matter. If you are married, for example, you are legally entitled to make end-of-life decisions for a spouse who is incapacitated, or be covered under his or her insurance. This legal recognition is, as I understand it, what gay people want primarily. As for religious sanction, they can, if they wish, always find churches or synagogues that welcome them, or simply create their own.

I suspect that even those Americans who oppose “gay marriage” are mostly fair-minded enough to think committed gay couples should have basic legal protections.

And if the only thing standing in the way is a misunderstood word, the answer seems painfully obvious. Either remind people that the word has dimensions beyond religion, or find another one. Then give gay people the right they deserve.

But, that probably makes too much sense. As a political reality, it’s always easier to appeal to fear than to reason. It’s all well and good to be fair-minded and logical and inspire voters toward the same. That’s a wonderful ideal.

Too bad there aren’t that many votes in it.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.