Bush backs constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages

US President George W Bush yesterday backed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage — a move he said was needed to stop judges from changing the definition of the “most enduring human institution”.

“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 civilisation,” the president said in urging Congress to approve such an amendment.

Marriage cannot be severed from its “cultural, religious and natural” roots, Mr Bush said. It was a statement sure to please his conservative backers.

Mr Bush, who has cast himself as a “compassionate conservative,” left the door open for civil unions as an alternative to same-sex marriages.

He noted actions in Massachusetts where four judges on the highest court have indicated they will order the issuance of marriage licences to applicants of the same gender in May of this year.

In San Francisco, city officials have issued thousands of marriage licences, to same-sex couples. This, Mr Bush said, is contrary to state law.

The conservative wing of his party has been anxious for Bush to follow up his rhetoric on the issue with action. In recent weeks, Mr Bush has repeatedly said he was “troubled” by the Massachusetts court decision and the gay marriages in San Francisco, but stopped short of endorsing a constitutional amendment.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled it unconstitutional to bar gay couples from marriage. Gay and lesbian couples from Europe and more than 20 states have flocked to San Francisco since city officials decided to marry gay couples.

At least 38 states and the federal government have approved laws or amendments barring the recognition of gay marriage.

Sen John Kerry, Mr Bush’s likely Democratic opponent in this year’s election, says he opposes gay marriages. But he also opposes a constitutional ban, because he says it is for states to decide, his spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said yesterday.

Wide-ranging reaction reflected the controversial nature of the issue. A major gay Republican group, the Log Cabin Republicans, accused Mr Bush of “pandering to the radical right” and “writing discrimination into the Constitution”.