WASHINGTON _ President Bush on Tuesday urged Congress to approve
a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, adding new
fuel to the emotional election-year debate over gay weddings.

Declaring that "the voice of the people must be heard," Bush
said changing the Constitution was the only sure way to defeat
state court rulings and local government actions that had expanded
the definition of marriage to include gay couples.

His announcement set the stage for a divisive and protracted
battle in Congress and in state legislatures across the country. It
inflamed passions on both sides of an issue that touches deeply
held views about personal liberty, equality under law and
traditional moral values.

Gay-rights advocates accused Bush of trying to exploit unease
over homosexuality for political gain, at the risk of encouraging
animosity toward gays. Social conservatives, a key element of the
Republican base, hailed his decision as a victory for traditional
families.

Bush, who initially resisted altering the Constitution as the
issue gained prominence over the past year, said recent court
rulings and the growing number of gay marriages left him no
choice.

"After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and
millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities
are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of
civilization," the president said. "If we are to prevent the
meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must
enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in
America."

Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North
Carolina, the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential
nomination, accused Bush of trying to divert attention from other,
more pressing problems. Both said they personally opposed gay
marriage, but thought the issue should be left to state
legislatures.

Kerry's home state took center stage in the national debate over
gay marriage in November, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court ruled that the state's constitution gives same-sex couples
the right to marry. More recently, local officials in San Francisco
and Sandoval County, N.M., started issuing marriage licenses to gay
couples without a court order or permission from state
authorities.

"All Americans should be concerned when a president who is in
political trouble tries to tamper with the Constitution of the
United States at the start of his re-election campaign," Kerry
said. "This president can't talk about jobs. He can't talk about
health care. He can't talk about a foreign policy which has driven
away allies and weakened the United States, so he is looking for a
wedge issue to divide the American people."

Although Bush didn't offer specific language for a
constitutional amendment, White House aides said he favored a
proposal by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., declaring that
"marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a
man and a woman."

Top Republicans in Congress signaled that they are in no hurry
to take up the proposed amendment, even though Bush urged swift
action.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he supports the
constitutional amendment, but only as a last resort.

"We are looking at other ways of doing it, knowing that it would
be very difficult to pass a constitutional amendment," DeLay said.
Rep. David Dreier of California, another member of the House
Republican leadership, came out against the proposed amendment,
calling it unnecessary.

Changing the Constitution isn't easy. The amendment would have
to win approval in both the House of Representatives and the Senate
by a two-thirds majority before being ratified by at least 38 of
the 50 states. As worded, Musgrave's amendment on gay marriage
would set a seven-year deadline for ratification.

Although polls show that Americans overwhelmingly oppose gay
marriage, they are far less enthusiastic about changing the
Constitution to ban it. A nationwide poll released Tuesday by the
University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey
found that only 41 percent of Americans support a constitutional
amendment against gay marriage.

If approved, the gay-marriage amendment would be only the second
time that the Constitution was changed to withhold rights from a
broad class of citizens. The first was the 18th Amendment in 1919,
which banned alcohol. That experiment ended 14 years later when the
21st Amendment repealed the ban.

"To use the Constitution to discriminate against our families is
un-American, shameful and divisive," said Cheryl Jacques, the
president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest
gay-rights group. "There is no doubt in my mind that the American
people will see this as an ugly and discriminatory game of
politics."

Bush left open the possibility that states could approve civil
unions and other forms of domestic partnership that carry some of
the same legal rights as marriage, but other states wouldn't have
to recognize them. He said the constitutional amendment should
"fully protect marriage, while leaving state legislatures free to
make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than
marriage."

Social conservatives called Bush's announcement a sorely needed
boost for traditional values. Karl Rove, Bush's chief political
strategist, gave conservative and evangelical leaders advance
notice of Bush's decision in a series of phone calls Tuesday
morning.

"We have been assured that he will not only endorse it, he will
use his political capital in Congress," said Gary Bauer, the head
of the conservative Campaign for Working Families. Bauer, who ran
against Bush for the 2000 Republican nomination, said Bush's
decision would help energize conservatives for the November
election.

But some conservatives view the proposal as an affront to
states' rights and personal freedom. Even Vice President Dick
Cheney, who has a gay daughter, has questioned the need for a
constitutional amendment.

"People should be free to enter into any kind of relationship
they want to enter into. It's really no one else's business,"
Cheney said at a vice presidential candidates' debate during the
2000 campaign. "I think different states are likely to come to
different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there
should necessarily be a federal policy in this area."

Cheney has said since that he would support Bush's decision.

Others said Bush should have gone even further by seeking a ban
on civil unions and other legally sanctioned gay partnerships.
Sandy Rios, the president of Concerned Women for America, called
the proposed amendment a "defective remedy."

Gay Republicans predicted that gays would abandon Bush in
November. Polls after the 2000 election indicated that Bush got
about 1 million of the 4 million votes cast by self-described
homosexuals. He got about 15 million votes from social
conservatives.
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