Get ready for round two (or is it round six?) of the tarring of Barack Obama with his religious affiliations. The opening bell came on Thursday when the California Supreme Court overturned that state's ban on same-sex marriage.

In round one, the focus was on Obama's ties to his outspoken pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The subtext was race.

In round two, the focus will be on the stands of the larger denomination that Obama is part of -- the United Church of Christ -- and the subtext will be sex.

Ah, race, sex, religion, politics -- plenty there for a volatile confrontation.

The potential problem for Obama is that the UCC (which is also my denomination) at its General Synod in 2005 didn't just oppose laws banning same sex marriage. It took a strong stand affirming "equal marriage rights for couples regardless of their gender." It took that stand drawing on theological and Biblical reasons as well as the more secular equal rights language used by the courts.

In California, five UCC congregations joined a UCC-related seminary in filing briefs with the Supreme Court in favor of striking down the gay marriage ban.

You think the Republicans might notice this?

Now the public positions of both John McCain and Obama on gay marriage are virtually identical. They both say that they oppose same-sex marriage while supporting giving gay couples the legal protections afforded to married couples. The magic word that forms the dividing line is "marriage."

McCain, however, is not tied to a church that has aggressively supported marriage rights for all. Obama is.

Trinity UCC is unusual among predominantly African-American congregations in its embrace of gay couples. And the UCC nationally has been consistently out front on this issue. Its general minister and president, John Thomas, in hailing the California court ruling, said Thursday, "As recent decisions in other states makes clear, until all couples are able to marry, their separate status will never be equal status."

Obama was one of the main speakers at the UCC's 50th anniversary gathering last year in Hartford, Conn. Even as he has distanced himself from his former pastor, he has maintained his ties with his home church, the place that has been his spiritual home over the last 20 years.

Just as Obama noted that he disagreed with many of the things Wright said, he has clearly taken a stand on same sex marriage that does not line up perfectly with that of his denomination. But don't expect the conservative attack machine to spend much time on those subtleties.

So there are two levels of political trouble emerging from the court's decision.

One will be the Republican efforts to add Obama's affiliation with the UCC into its portrait of him as an out-of-the-mainstream, overly-liberal political figure.

The other will be to try to use this issue to mobilize the religiously conservative voters, especially in California where there is likely to be a vote in November on a constitutional amendment to overturn the court decision. The turnout on that ballot measure could have some impact on the presidential vote.

Once again, as it has so many times before in this 2008 campaign, the intersection of religion and politics is going to move into the spotlight.