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Bush to push amendment to ban same-sex marriage

AP

WASHINGTON - President Bush will speak in favor of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Monday, the eve of a scheduled Senate vote on the cause that is dear to his conservative backers.

The amendment would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages. To become law, the proposal would need two-thirds support in the Senate and House, and then be ratified by at least 38 state legislatures.

It stands little chance of passing the 100-member Senate, where proponents are struggling to get even 50 votes.

Bush aides said he would be making his remarks on the subject Monday.

"The President firmly believes that marriage is an enduring and sacred institution between men and women and has supported measures to protect the sanctity of marriage," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

A slim majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press from March. But the poll also showed attitudes are changing: 63% opposed gay marriage in February 2004.

Those poll results don't reflect how people might feel about amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage.

Clergy Group Aims to Block Gay Marriage Amendment

New York Times, Neela Banerjee, 5/22/05

An interfaith coalition of clergy members and lay leaders announced a petition drive on Monday aimed at blocking a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill on a vote along party lines last week, and the full Senate is expected to vote on it the week of June 5.

About 35 representatives of the coalition, Clergy for Fairness, said at a news conference that more than 1,600 clergy members had signed an online petition against the amendment. The group's Web site has postcards that lay people can print out and send to members of Congress.

By the end of this week, the site should have an electronic postcard as well, said Joe Conn, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an organizer of the lobbying effort but not in the coalition.

Among those represented by the coalition are clergy members and groups affiliated with mainline Protestant churches; the Interfaith Alliance; Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League, the Union for Reform Judaism and the National Council of Jewish Women; Sikh groups; and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

Four weeks ago, 50 prominent conservative Christian and Jewish leaders, including evangelicals and Roman Catholic cardinals and archbishops, signed a petition backing the amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Those leaders also promised to distribute postcards to their congregants to urge support of the amendment. The Knights of Columbus alone is distributing 10 million postcards to Catholic churches.

Few experts expect the marriage bill to pass this year. But state campaigns to ban same-sex marriage drew large numbers of people to the polls in 2004, and conservatives hope to mobilize voters by raising the issue again.

Moderate and liberal religious groups have recently made an effort to raise their profile on many issues, including those involving personal morality that many Americans had considered the domain of conservative Christians.

The clergy members at the news conference on Monday said that although the groups opposing the amendment were not of one mind on homosexuality or same-sex marriage, passage of the amendment would give deference to a single point of view and would make the Constitution an instrument of discrimination against a class of citizens.

"When one group is singled out for discrimination, it's not long before other groups will be singled out, too," said Rabbi Craig Axler of Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen, Pa. "It's the first time we see the Constitution in danger of enshrining discrimination against one party, one class, and to remain silent as a Jew is unconscionable."

McCain says states should decide same-sex marriage issue

New York Daily News, Michael McAuliff, 5/21/06

The Republican with the loudest presidential buzz says he won't back a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, in spite of its importance to conservative GOP primary voters.

Arizona Sen. John McCain said Sunday the controversial proposal to amend the Constitution would step on states' rights.

"The states regulate the conditions of marriage, and unless there's some decisive overruling by the federal courts, then I will continue to believe that the states should decide," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday."

"We in Arizona should make our decisions about the status of marriage in our state just as the people in Massachusetts and other states should make their decisions," he said.

Many pundits believe a push to ban same-sex marriage in Ohio in 2004 helped President Bush beat John Kerry by boosting turnout among religious conservatives in what turned out to be the decisive state.

McCain has been seen as trying to move to the right recently, speaking at the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and taking a tougher stand on abortion.

But he said he'd made the mistake of giving in to "political expediency" before _ including supporting a move to preserve South Carolina 's Confederate flag _ and would try not to do so in the future.

"It was an act of cowardice," the senator said.

Stances framed on gay unions

As Senate debate nears, backers of constitutional ban say it would protect marriage; foes say it's discriminatory, denies equality

Akron Beacon Journal, Collete M. Jenkins, 5/28/06

Sometimes you have to take a stand for what you believe.

That is why Bishop F. Josephus Johnson, Thomas Reke and Charles Wright are in the fight over a proposed U.S. constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

The three Akron residents are among religious leaders and social activists across the country lining up in opposing coalitions over the proposal, which essentially would ban gay marriage.

Representatives on both sides are trying to influence U.S. senators before Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., brings the proposed amendment to a vote next week. Both camps are waging Web site campaigns, encouraging people to contact their senators about the impending vote and make their views known with the simple click of a mouse.

Last week, Johnson, who is founder and pastor of The House of the Lord in West Akron, was in Washington , D.C. , for a news conference with Frist and others who support the amendment. Johnson has agreed to lead the Ohio Coalition of the Alliance for Marriage, the national organization that wrote the proposal.

Johnson, whose church attracts nearly 2,000 worshippers on Sundays and whose jurisdiction, as bishop, includes more than 20,000 affiliates, sees the amendment as a way to protect marriage.

"The activist courts are now striking down the marriage amendments passed in various states," he said. "In essence, with a stroke of a pen, judges who are appointed for life -- not elected -- are wiping out the vote of the people. We are interested in protecting marriage so that it is not redefined by a small group of people for the entire nation."

On the other side are Reke and Wright, who have been partners for 24 years. They view the amendment as a way of writing discrimination into the Constitution. Both men are members of Equality Ohio, a Columbus-based advocacy organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

"I'm all for fighting for religious freedom," said the 65-year-old Reke, "but this is a group of people who want to force their religious beliefs on everyone in America ."

Added the 46-year-old Wright: "It's legislating hate against a group of people, and that's just not right."

Criticism of courts

But Matt Daniels, founder of the Virginia-based Alliance for Marriage, said the mission of his organization is to ensure that more children in America are raised in a home with a mother and a father.

He predicts that if the Washington Supreme Court,in a pending case, strikes down that state's law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, the ruling will produce "legal chaos" across the nation because that state does not require residency for a marriage license.

"The federal courts have already become actively involved in keeping with the larger strategy of activist groups to do an end run around democracy and public opinion through both the federal and state courts," Daniels said. In 2005, "a federal judge invoked the U.S. Constitution to strike down Nebraska 's state marriage amendment, which was democratically approved in a referendum by over 70 percent of voters."

"Suffice it to say that the debate over marriage has been, and continues to be, forced upon the American people by the courts. The future of marriage in America is a race between the courts and AFM's ( Alliance for Marriage) Marriage Protection Amendment."

States' laws

At least nine states, including Washington , New Jersey and New York , face lawsuits challenging their marriage laws.

Massachusetts is the only state that permits same-sex marriage. Several other states, including Vermont , California and Connecticut , allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships.

More than 20 states, including Ohio , have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and, in some cases, civil unions.

The Alliance for Marriage drafted the amendment in July 2001, and the issue first came up for a vote in Congress in 2004. That year, the amendment failed to gain the needed two-thirds majority in either house.

This time, supporters expect the amendment to get more than the 48 Senate votes it received in 2004, but they acknowledge that it probably will fail to get the needed 67.

They believe the amendment will have a better chance of passing if one of the cases pending in a state court (in Washington state, for example) produces a ruling that imposes same-sex marriage.

Proposal 'purely political'

Lynne Bowman, executive director of Equality Ohio, said the fact that supporters don't expect the amendment to pass is evidence that the debate is "purely political."

Her organization is working with the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign to oppose the amendment. The Human Rights Campaign is the nation's largest organization advocating equality for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

"This doesn't have anything to do with marriage," Bowman said of the debate. "It's all political, and I don't think it's an issue of being Republican or Democratic. There are politicians on both sides that support equal marriage, and those who don't support it. It's a way for politicians to mobilize a base of people who support extreme views, like the fundamental evangelicals. And maybe it's a payment of debt that they agreed to in the 2004 election."

Focus on marriage

Bishop Johnson, however, stresses that he agreed to join the effort of the Alliance for Marriage because it is not an extremist organization. "This is a centrist movement," he said. "We are neither to the left or to the right. People ought to be able to live the way they want, but that does not give them the right to redefine marriage for everyone. We're not interested in trying to keep homosexuals from being together. We're not interested in telling them how to live. We're not interested in them receiving benefits from companies. We are interested in protecting marriage so that it is not redefined by a group that is less than 1 percent of the population."

Equal treatment sought

Bowman, Wright and Reke contend that their opposition to the amendment is about equal treatment for all American citizens.

"The way I see it is, they're trying to use the Constitution to restrict rights rather than continue its tradition as a document that gives rights," Bowman said. "... If we want to do a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, let's do one that won't allow people to get a divorce."

Johnson acknowledged the need to do something to reverse the divorce rate in America , but he said he does not believe legalizing same-sex marriage is a way to do that.

"If marriage is redefined, the historic and cross-cultural understanding of marriage as the union of husband and wife will be called bigotry," Johnson said. "The law will teach our children that there is nothing special about mothers and fathers raising children together, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot. We will be opening the floodgates to making it discriminatory to say anything that is in the Bible."

Mrs. Bush: Don't Campaign on Marriage Ban

Associated Press Online, Nedra Pickler, 5/15/06

Some election-year advice to Republicans from a high-ranking source who has the president's ear: Don't use a proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage as a campaign tool.

Just who is that political strategist? Laura Bush.

The first lady told "Fox News Sunday" that she thinks the American people want a debate on the issue.

"It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue a lot of sensitivity," she said.

The Senate will debate legislation that would have the Constitution define marriage as the union between a man and a woman early next month, Majority Leader Bill Frist said on CNN's "Late Edition."

President Bush supports the amendment, but Vice President Dick Cheney does not. Cheney's daughter, Mary, is a lesbian and has been speaking out against the marriage amendment as she promotes her new book, "Now It's My Turn."

Mary Cheney wrote that she almost quit working on the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004 because of Bush's position on gay marriage. Asked Sunday about reports that White House political adviser Karl Rove and other Republicans want to use the issue to mobilize conservatives for the midterm election, Cheney said she hoped "no one would think about trying to amend the Constitution as a political strategy."

"I certainly don't know what conversations have gone on between Karl and anybody up on the Hill," Cheney added in her appearance on Fox. "But you know, what I can say is look, amending the Constitution with this amendment, this piece of legislation, is a bad piece of legislation. It is writing discrimination into the Constitution, and, as I say, it is fundamentally wrong."

But Frist said he would defend the amendment even to Dick Cheney.

"I basically say, Mr. Vice President, right now marriage is under attack in this country," Frist said on CNN. "And we've seen activist judges overturning state by state law, where state legislatures have passed laws defining marriage between a man and a woman, and that's being overturned by a handful of activist judges around the country. And that is why we need an amendment to come to the floor of the United States Senate to define marriage as that union between one man and one woman."

Conservative Christians Warn Republicans Against Inaction

The New York Times, David D. Kirkpatrick, 5/15/06

Some of President Bush's most influential conservative Christian allies are becoming openly critical of the White House and Republicans in Congress, warning that they will withhold their support in the midterm elections unless Congress does more to oppose same-sex marriage, obscenity and abortion.

"There is a growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose the Congressional elections this fall," said Richard Viguerie, a conservative direct-mail pioneer.

Mr. Viguerie also cited dissatisfaction with government spending, the war in Iraq and the immigration-policy debate, which Mr. Bush is scheduled to address in a televised speech on Monday night.

"I can't tell you how much anger there is at the Republican leadership," Mr. Viguerie said. "I have never seen anything like it."

In the last several weeks, Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential Christian conservatives, has publicly accused Republican leaders of betraying the social conservatives who helped elect them in 2004. He has also warned in private meetings with about a dozen of the top Republicans in Washington that he may turn critic this fall unless the party delivers on conservative goals.

And at a meeting in Northern Virginia this weekend of the Council for National Policy, an alliance of the most prominent Christian conservatives, several participants said sentiment toward the White House and Republicans in Congress had deteriorated sharply since the 2004 elections.

When the group met in the summer of 2004, it resembled a pep rally for Mr. Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill, and one session focused on how to use state initiatives seeking to ban same-sex marriage to help turn out the vote. This year, some participants are complaining that as soon as Mr. Bush was re-elected he stopped expressing his support for a constitutional amendment banning such unions.

Christian conservative leaders have often threatened in the months before an election to withhold their support for Republicans in an effort to press for their legislative goals. In the 1990's, Dr. Dobson in particular became known for his jeremiads against the Republican party, most notably in the months before the 1998 midterm elections.

But the complaints this year are especially significant because they underscore how the broad decline in public approval for Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans is beginning to cut into their core supporters. The threatened defections come just two years after many Christian conservatives -- most notably Dr. Dobson -- abandoned much of their previous reservations and poured energy into electing Republicans in 2004.

Dr. Dobson gave his first presidential endorsement to Mr. Bush and held get-out-the-vote rallies that attracted thousands of admirers in states with pivotal Senate races while Focus on the Family and many of its allies helped register voters in conservative churches.

Republican officials, who were granted anonymity to speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the situation, acknowledged the difficult political climate but said they planned to rally conservatives by underscoring the contrast with Democrats and emphasizing the recent confirmations of two conservatives to the Supreme Court.

Midterm Congressional elections tend to be won by whichever side can motivate more true believers to vote. Dr. Dobson and other conservatives are renewing their complaints about the Republicans at a time when several recent polls have shown sharp declines in approval among Republicans and conservatives. And compared with other constituencies, evangelical Protestants have historically been suspicious of the worldly business of politics and thus more prone to stay home unless they feel clear moral issues are at stake.

"When a president is in a reasonably strong position, these kind of leaders don't have a lot of leverage," said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst. "But when the president is weak, they tend to have a lot of leverage."

Dr. Dobson, whose daily radio broadcast has millions of listeners, has already signaled his willingness to criticize Republican leaders. In a recent interview with Fox News on the eve of a visit to the White House, he accused Republicans of "just ignoring those that put them in office."

Dr. Dobson cited the House's actions on two measures that passed over the objections of social conservatives: a hate-crime bill that extended protections to gay people, and increased support for embryonic stem cell research.

"There's just very, very little to show for what has happened," Dr. Dobson said, "and I think there's going to be some trouble down the road if they don't get on the ball."

According to people who were at the meetings or were briefed on them, Dr. Dobson has made the same point more politely in a series of private conversations over the last two weeks in meetings with several top Republicans, including Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser; Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader; Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the House speaker; and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.

"People are getting concerned that they have not seen some of these issues move forward that were central to the 2004 election," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who attended the meetings.

Richard D. Land, a top official of the Southern Baptist Convention who has been one of Mr. Bush's most loyal allies, said in an interview last week that many conservatives were upset that Mr. Bush had not talked more about a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

"A lot of people are disappointed that he hasn't put as much effort into the marriage amendment as he did for the prescription drug benefit or Social Security reform," Dr. Land said.

Republicans say they are taking steps to revive their support among Christian conservatives. On Thursday night, Mr. Rove made the case for the party at a private meeting of the Council for National Policy, participants said.

In addition to reminding conservatives of the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, party strategists say the White House and Senate Republicans are escalating their fights against the Democrats over conservative nominees to lower federal courts, and the Senate is set to revive the same-sex marriage debate next month with a vote on the proposed amendment.

But it is unclear how much Congressional Republicans will be able to do for social conservatives before the next election.

No one expects the same-sex marriage amendment to pass this year. Republican leaders have not scheduled votes on a measure to outlaw transporting minors across state lines for abortions, and the proposal faces long odds in the Senate. A measure to increase obscenity fines for broadcasters is opposed by media industry trade groups, pitting Christian conservatives against the business wing of the party, and Congressional leaders have not committed to bring it to a vote.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and another frequent participant in the Council for National Policy, argued that Christian conservatives were hurting their own cause.

"If the Republicans do poorly in 2006," Mr. Norquist said, "the establishment will explain that it was because Bush was too conservative, specifically on social and cultural issues."

Dr. Dobson declined to comment. His spokesman, Paul Hetrick, said that Dr. Dobson was "on a fact-finding trip to see where Republicans are regarding the issues that concern values voters most, especially the Marriage Protection Act," and that it was too soon to tell the results.

Cheney's Daughter Finally Has Her Say

The New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller, 5/15/06

Mary Cheney is here to tell you that her father, Vice President Dick Cheney, is not the Darth Vader of the Bush administration but a "big, warm, fuzzy guy."

He was the father who said he loved her and wanted her to be happy when she broke the news in high school that she was gay, she said. Years later, he was the adviser she turned to when she nearly quit the 2004 Bush campaign over the president's support for an amendment banning gay marriage.

"However strongly I feel about the federal marriage amendment, I don't live in a world, we don't live in a world, where you have the luxury of being a single-issue voter," Ms. Cheney said Friday at the Mayflower Hotel here. She said she stayed on with the campaign, as director of vice-presidential operations, because she thought President Bush was the best candidate on national security.

And while she thinks Mr. Bush's support for the same-sex marriage amendment helped Republicans win in 2004, "that's certainly not going to be true forever," she said, because attitudes are changing. In short, she said, "the Republican Party does need to wake up on that position."

For 37 years, Mary Cheney was the good political daughter who threw herself into her father's campaigns and kept her opinions to herself. No longer. With the publication last week of "Now It's My Turn: A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life," Ms. Cheney, formerly averse to the news media, has waded into a contentious political issue and a complicated part of her now-public life.

"It's been six years since my dad first was nominated, and in that time everybody, from the media to the far right wing to the far left wing to the Democrat nominee for president, has had the chance to express their viewpoint on me and my private life," she said. "Now it's my turn."

Still, Ms. Cheney seems to be feeling her way into the limelight. Her first interview was only two weeks ago, with Diane Sawyer of ABC News, and over a lunch of gazpacho in the Mayflower's lobby restaurant she was pleasant but wary. One of her book chapters is titled "Anybody but The New York Times," and is in large part about her father's refusal to have Times reporters on his 2004 campaign plane because he disliked the paper's coverage of him -- a position she endorsed.

"Now It's My Turn" is also careful not to put too many strains on the family business of politics. ("We'd go campaigning, I guess other families would go to Disneyland ," she said.) Her description of how she came out to her parents in 1986 while she was a junior at McLean High School in Virginia -- her mother burst into tears and hugged her -- amounts to a restrained five paragraphs.

A chapter about the federal marriage amendment, which her father also personally opposed, shows no anger toward Mr. Bush. She praises the president for telling her, through her father, that he would understand if she wanted to issue a public statement opposing his position.

She writes that she appreciated the gesture, but added, "The only thing it would have accomplished would have been to turn me and my sexual orientation into a prime-time campaign issue, something I was very much trying to avoid -- as it turns out, without much success."

Ms. Cheney is not restrained about John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, who enraged her when he brought up her sexual orientation in his 2004 campaign debate with her father. When Mr. Edwards congratulated her parents on how they had "embraced" their daughter, Ms. Cheney writes that she, her mother and her sister concluded that "he was complete and total slime."

Asked about Ms. Cheney's characterization, Mr. Edwards said in New York last week that "all I did was say that the vice president and his family, like millions of other families, should be applauded for embracing all their family members."

Ms. Cheney, who was her father's personal aide in the 2000 campaign, offers a few inside tidbits. She thought he was kidding when he told her Mr. Bush was thinking of offering him the job even though he was leading the vice-presidential search committee.

In 2004, top campaign advisers, including Karl Rove, became apoplectic over the prospect of a wives' debate after Ms. Cheney arranged a town hall meeting with her mother, Lynne, and Teresa Heinz Kerry. "You would have thought that I'd just announced that a biblical plague was about to be visited on the face of the earth," Ms. Cheney writes. The event was canceled.

Ms. Cheney now works as the chief of staff to Ted Leonsis, the vice chairman of AOL. She says she thinks her father's political days will be over after 2008 but leaves the door open just a crack.

"Since Dad's made it very clear that he won't be running for office again, the 2004 presidential race was my last campaign as well," she writes. "Unless, of course, someone talks Dad into heading up another search committee."

Mormon church signs petition for marriage amendment

The Associated Press, 4/25/06

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has signed a national petition calling for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Elder Russell M. Nelson, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-tier of Mormon leadership, signed on behalf of the church. He was among 50 religious leaders to sign, including members of the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Jewish faiths.

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote June 6 on a marriage amendment resolution.

The petition is being circulated by The Religious Coalition for Marriage, a committee of national religious leaders.

"We are convinced that this is the only measure that will adequately protect marriage from those who would circumvent the legislative process and force a redefinition of it on the whole of our society," reads the petition, released Monday.

The Mormon church issued a statement acknowledging its involvement, but spokesman Dale Bills declined further comment. Nelson declined to grant interviews.

Bills referred questions to a 1994 church statement on same-gender relationships on the faith's Web site.

Mormon doctrine affirms marriage between a man and a woman and opposes same-gender unions or other sexual relations outside of marriage.

Police looking for source of hate mail

Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota), 4/26/06

Law enforcement investigators are looking into a letter received by state Sen. Satveer Chaudhary that criticized his vote against a gay marriage ballot measure and had a bullet hole drawn on a picture of him.

Tim Leslie, assistant commissioner for the Public Safety Department, said Tuesday that a State Patrol officer is working with a Fridley police officer to determine the origins of the mailing.

The hostile note was attached to a newspaper ad run by a group promoting the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions. Leslie said the return address on the mailing doesn't exist.

Chaudhary, DFL-Fridley, issued a news release Monday disparaging the letter as political hate speech.

"One anonymous coward does not change my mission as a legislator," Chaudhary said. "It is my hope that Minnesotans will reject these blatant attempts to drive a wedge between the people of our state and not sink to their level of discourse."

The organization that ran the ad, Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage, condemned the letter and said the group doesn't condone threats of violence.

…And God is angry with our nation in even tolerating the thought of same-sex marriage.
- Rev. Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority; CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports, 2/24/2004

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