Bush urges amendment on marriage

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President Bush yesterday urged the prompt passage of a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman, and stop attempts in several states to sanction homosexual "marriages."

"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," Mr. Bush said in a statement delivered in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

Mr. Bush stopped short of endorsing the language in a constitutional amendment offered by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and Sen. Wayne Allard, both Colorado Republicans, which White House spokesman Scott McClellan said this month "reflects the principles that he could support."

The president's likely Democratic rival in November, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, quickly denounced any amendment as "toying with United States Constitution for political purposes" and said that if given the chance, he would vote against it in the Senate.

"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," Mr. Kerry said yesterday.

For now, there is no set schedule for either the House or Senate even to debate an amendment, in part because Republicans can't agree on what the amendment should say.

But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, said that in the end, the Republican-controlled Congress will do "anything and everything available to us to protect marriage."

Mr. Bush has said for weeks that he's "troubled" by a ruling by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and a decision by the mayor of San Francisco to authorize "marriages" between homosexuals, but until yesterday he resisted pressure from conservative supporters to explicitly endorse a constitutional amendment.

"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," he said. "Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity. On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard."