Bush presses case against gay marriage (Agencies) Updated: 2004-07-11 10:55
President Bush says legalizing gay marriage would redefine the most
fundamental institution of civilization and that a constitutional amendment is
needed to protect it.
A few activist judges and local officials have taken it on themselves to
change the meaning of marriage, Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.
President Bush said
July 10, 2004 that allowing gay marriage would undermine families, as he
played to his conservative base by pushing a constitutional amendment to
ban same-sex unions. Bush speaks at the Lapp Electrical Service company in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania while on a three-stop campaign bus tour of
Pennsylvania, July 9, 2004.
[Reuters]
| Leading the chorus of support
for an amendment, Bush said, "If courts create their own arbitrary definition of
marriage as a mere legal contract, and cut marriage off from its cultural,
religious and natural roots, then the meaning of marriage is lost and the
institution is weakened."
His remarks follow the opening of Senate debate Friday on a constitutional
amendment effectively banning gay marriage.
Reflecting the election-year sensitivity of the issue, Sen. Patrick Leahy,
D-Vt., said Republicans are using the constitutional amendment as a bulletin
board for campaign sloganeering.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, accused Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry of holding inconsistent positions.
Kerry and running mate Sen. John Edwards oppose gay marriage, but support
civil unions.
Bush singled out Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court, which called marriage
an evolving paradigm. "That sends a message to the next generation that marriage
has no enduring meaning, and that ages of moral teaching and human experience
have nothing to teach us about this institution," he said.
The president urged the House and Senate to send to the states for
ratification an amendment that defines marriage in the United States as a union
of a man and woman as husband and wife.
Senate Democrats signaled they will not throw barriers in front of the
resolution, paving the way for a vote on the amendment as early as Wednesday.
A constitutional amendment should never be undertaken lightly, Bush said,
"yet to defend marriage, our nation has no other choice."
The vote puts some Democrats and Republicans in a difficult position. One
senator acknowledged the political risk in trying to walk a line supporting both
traditional marriage and gay rights.
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