SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – On the day after voters in 11 states delivered a resounding rebuke to the concept of same-sex marriage, the liberal city that helped make same-sex unions an election year issue assessed the role its exuberant, two-month wedding march may have played in President Bush’s reelection.

Some analysts credited San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to let same-sex couples marry here without a court’s blessing with inspiring the antigay amendments that gave the president’s conservative base a reason to go to the polls in crucial battleground states like Ohio.

“It gives them a position to rally around,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “That whole issue [same-sex marriage] has been too much, too fast, too soon. People aren’t ready for it.”

Others, meanwhile, disputed that Newsom’s actions in February – three months before Massachusetts started allowing same-sex couples to wed under an order from the state’s highest court – were a significant factor in Bush’s victory.

“We did not see a backlash yesterday in those 11 states so much as revealed in vote form an existing prejudice which was used in an inflammatory fashion for political gain,” said Assemblymember Mark Leno, chair of the California Legislature’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Caucus, on Nov. 3.

Leno, D-San Francisco, is scheduled to introduce legislation in December that would legalize marriage for same-sex couples in California. A dozen same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco, meanwhile, have sued the state to overturn its laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

Newsom, who cited Bush’s call in January for a federal marriage amendment as motivating his decision to open City Hall to same-sex nuptials, took the offensive following the elections when he was asked whether he had second-thoughts about his timing.

“I find it pretty repugnant in a day and age where we are all students of history that people would question, based upon strong beliefs, someone or somebody that at least stands up,” he said.

The 37-year-old Democrat then suggested that if political observers wanted a scapegoat for Bush’s win, they would be better off looking to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who campaigned for the president in Ohio, or Osama bin Laden’s latest taped missive to the American people.

In exit polls conducted for The Associated Press by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, moral values was cited as the top issue in the presidential vote in exit polls, just ahead of the economy and terrorism. No issue tapped into the moral unease of voters more than the same-sex marriage issue, and the placement of the same-sex marriage issue on the ballot in state elections helped keep the issue in voters’ minds.

The polls showed that 35 percent of the respondents support civil unions but not marriage for same-sex couples, and they backed Bush 52 to 47 percent. A slightly bigger group, 37 percent, said same-sex couples should get no legal recognition. That group supported Bush by 70 percent to 29 percent, according to the polls.

But in a post-mortem released Nov. 3 on the 11 state constitutional amendments defining marriage as between a man and a woman, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force rejected the idea that using same-sex marriage to turn out evangelical Christians was a decisive factor for Bush in the three swing states where the issue was on the ballot.

The New York-based gay rights group noted that the president’s Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, fared better in Oregon and Ohio than Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee in 2000, did four years ago, and tied Gore’s performance in Michigan.

“It is a legitimate question to examine whether some of the tactics that we have used have played a role in promoting a bigger backlash,” said Lorri Jean, executive director of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. “We didn’t have control over what Gavin Newsom did, but we totally supported it. … Would there have been a smarter, more strategic way? I don’t know.”