This thread isn’t to start a debate about gay marriage, gupshup already has several of those, but rather to highlight how pathetic Bush has become. With his poll numbers in the gutter he tries to turn the American population away from U.S. soldiers being killed in Iraq and divide them over the gay marriage issue. Bush, incredibly pathetic and embarrassment to the U.S.
In Radio Address, Bush Backs Amendment Defining Marriage As a Union Between a Man and a Woman
**WASHINGTON Jun 3, 2006 (AP)**— President Bush on Saturday backed a resolution to amend the Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman even though the idea has little chance of being passed in the Senate.
"Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society," Bush said in his Saturday radio address. "Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society."
Democrats say Senate floor time is being wasted on the issue, and accuse Republicans of making a pre-midterm election appeal to social conservatives whose votes were key to Bush's re-election.
This November, initiatives banning same-sex marriages are expected to be on the ballot in Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.
"Sadly, President Bush is playing election-year politics with this divisive issue," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Friday. "He is shamelessly using this ploy to energize his right-wing base. We should never rewrite the Constitution to enshrine intolerance."
The White House said Bush did not devote his radio address to the issue or decide to host a presidential event Monday to again endorse the amendment because it is politically expedient, but because there's a vote on it scheduled next week in the Senate.
"On Monday, I will meet with a coalition of community leaders, constitutional scholars, family and civic organizations and religious leaders," Bush said in urging Congress to pass the amendment and send it to the states for ratification. "They're Republicans, Democrats and independents who've come together to support this amendment."
David Buckel, Marriage Project director of Lambda Legal, a national organization working to protect the rights of lesbians, gay men and others, said the amendment would be damaging to the lives of same-sex couples and families, which raise millions of children.
"It would brand lesbian and gay men as legally inferior individuals," he said. "It would write into the supreme law of the land that this group of people are inferior and when it's the law, it's a message to everyone else in society that they have license to discriminate."