Can President Obama catch a break on gay issues? Apparently not. Social conservatives are also mad at the president for signing an executive order extending certain benefits to the spouses of gay and lesbian federal employees, calling it “marriage light.”

Wednesday's memorandum offers federal employees sick leave to take care of a sick partner or a non-biological child, but partners remain blocked from access to primary health insurance and pensions. Obama did grant access to a government health insurance program that pays for long-term health conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.

But gay activists, who've been on a slow burn all spring over the president's gay rights jitters, called the move too little, too late. Several gay leaders went so far as to call it an insult.

“It makes a mockery. It's an insult,” prominent gay activist David Mixner said Wednesday on National Public Radio.

Social conservatives were also angry at the president for signing the memorandum, calling it a sneaky way of legalizing gay unions.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called the new benefits illegal, and threatened legal action.

The president's memo “appears to be a violation of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and clearly violates the spirit of the federal law which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife,” Perkins said in a statement. “[It] uses taxpayer money to placate an angry portion of his base at the expense of the rule of law. Ironically, Mr. Obama has pursued an aggressive pro-homosexual agenda – but his actions to date are, apparently, insufficient for the radical homosexuals pushing their extreme agenda.”

“Barack Obama's order … attempts to elevate relationships outside of marriage as if they are the same as marriage,” Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright said in a statement. “Marriage provides unique benefits to individuals, families, and society that cannot be replicated by any other living arrangements. Marriage helps nurture children and reduces social and financial costs to society by promoting healthy behavior. Federal funds should not be a political tool to elevate partner arrangements to be treated similar to marriage.”