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(Washington) Some election-year advice to
Republicans from a high-ranking source who has the president's ear: Don't use a
proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage as a campaign tool.
Just who is that political strategist? Laura
Bush.
The first lady told "Fox News Sunday"
that she thinks the American people want a debate on the issue. But, she said,
"I don't think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously."
"It requires a lot of sensitivity to just
talk about the issue — a lot of sensitivity," she said.
The Senate will debate legislation that would
have the Constitution define marriage as the union between a man and a woman
early next month, Majority Leader Bill Frist said on CNN's "Late
Edition."
President Bush supports the amendment, but Vice
President Dick Cheney does not. Cheney's daughter, Mary, is a lesbian and has
been speaking out against the marriage amendment as she promotes her new book,
"Now It's My Turn."
Mary Cheney wrote that she almost quit working on
the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004 because of Bush's position on gay marriage.
Asked Sunday about reports that White House political adviser Karl Rove and
other Republicans want to use the issue to mobilize conservatives for the
midterm election, she said she hoped "no one would think about trying to
amend the Constitution as a political strategy."
"I certainly don't know what conversations
have gone on between Karl and anybody up on the Hill," she said on Fox.
"But you know, what I can say is look, amending the Constitution with this
amendment, this piece of legislation, is a bad piece of legislation. It is
writing discrimination into the Constitution, and, as I say, it is fundamentally
wrong."
But Frist said he would defend the amendment even
to Dick Cheney.
"I basically say, Mr. Vice President, right
now marriage is under attack in this country," Frist said on CNN. "And
we've seen activist judges overturning state by state law, where state
legislatures have passed laws defining marriage between a man and a woman, and
that's being overturned by a handful of activist judges around the country. And
that is why we need an amendment to come to the floor of the United States
Senate to define marriage as that union between one man and one woman."
©365Gay.com 2006
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