The final full week before Tuesday's election was a busy one for campaigns attempting to win over undecided voters on Proposition 8 – the California ballot initiative that seeks to forbid gay marriage in the state.

On Thursday, proponents of gay marriage in California accused the other side of a deliberate web attack against their website, leaving opponents of the gay marriage ban unable to raise cash as the race moved into its final lap.

“I'm certain we'll hear a lot of denials today from the Prop 8 campaign, but this is clearly an orchestrated attempt to tear down what has become one of the largest grass-roots movements in California electoral history,” Patrick Guerriero, campaign director of No on Prop 8, told the Wall Street Journal.

“Beginning last night and continuing this morning a coordinated cyber attack on the No on Prop 8 website prevented some donors from being able to contribute,” said a No-On-8 campaign press release.

The No-On-8 campaign said the website was shut down for several hours Wednesday night, following an alleged denial-of-service attack. Officials said they had complained to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service about the incident.

A denial-of-service attack occurs when numerous computers on the Internet continuously request information from a website over a prolonged period of time, the overwhelmed computer becomes erratic, sluggish and unable to function properly, often crashing. The attack is fairly easy to spot: If a website traffic spike is traced back to only a handful of IP addresses (an Internet address) resulting in slowing or stopping the service, then it's most likely an attack. A more sophisticated attack would use a virus to infect hundreds or even thousands of unsuspecting computers connected to the Internet to do its dirty work, giving the initiator cover.

A Yes-On-8 spokeswoman denied there ever was an attack against the pro-gay camp. “There's so much traffic on the Internet, everybody's website is having difficultly at different times,” said Sonja Eddings Brown.

Friday's good news for gay marriage backers was the latest Field Poll showing the gay marriage ban failing – if only by a slight margin. The new poll showed the gay marriage ban failing 49%- to- 44%, but that's a much lower number than previous polls had recorded.

September's poll showed the anti-gay initiative failing by more than seventeen points (55% No vs. 38% Yes).

The poll's demographics verified the prevailing common wisdom about who's supporting the gay marriage ban. The most enthusiastic group of supporters were Republicans who prefer Senator John McCain for president (84%). A near-universal majority of people who self-identify as strongly conservative agree with banning gay marriage (87%). Protestants were the only religious group that held a majority (60%) against gay marriage, and only forty-four percent of Catholics said they were likely to vote for Prop 8.

From its inception, churches have formed the backbone of the Yes-On-8 campaign, even as gay marriage backers built a broader coalition of supporters by reaching out to progressive churches, politicians, labor unions, corporations, gay and lesbian rights groups and even the Hollywood elite for support.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) are credited for raising the majority (estimates range from 46%-to-77%) of the money raised in California to forbid gay marriage. Leading Christian-conservative groups with strong Protestant ties also donated heavily to the proposal to ban gay marriage.

The Yes-On-8 campaign's religious message – that the church backs marriage and it is being threatened by the inclusion of gay couples – resonated with many voters, eroding the lead held by gay marriage backers.

But this week the campaign went off-message, as gay marriage foes played a game of who-could-be-most-outrageous.

Rev. Jim Garlow, who has taken a leadership role in organizing the anti-gay marriage religious forces in California, said gay marriage would result in the “destruction of Western civilization.”

And earlier in the week, Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council said California's gay marriage issue was more important than the presidential race.

“In the minds of many people, Proposition 8 is the most important thing nationally on the ballot. We have survived bad presidents. But many, many are convinced we will not survive this redefinition of marriage,” Perkins said.

But the winner of the contest had to be Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, who likened gay marriage to the reign of Hitler. He told a boisterous crowd at an official Yes-On-8 rally in Sacramento Tuesday that the church in Germany stood by as Hitler took over.

“There was another time in history when people, when the bell tolled,” Dacus said. “And the question was whether or not they were going to hear it. The time was during Nazi Germany with Adolf Hitler.”

Behind in the polls and nearing the finish line, religious pro-Prop 8 leaders decided it was time to pray.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to converge on San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium Saturday for a day-long event of praying and fasting in support of social conservative issues including California's gay marriage ban.

“This is a spiritual battle; it must be won in prayer,” TheCall Founder Lou Engle said in a conference call uniting 3,000 pastors to strategize against gay marriage in California. “We need to take away the rights of the powers of darkness to bring this kind of resolution forward.”

But while organizers describe the event as non-political – “We're not there to make a political statement,” said Engle – proponents of gay marriage say it's clearly an anti-gay political rally.

“Clearly the focus is on taking away this right [to gay marriage],” said Dale Kelly Bankhead, a No-On-8 spokeswoman. “It seems political to us.”