Jan 16, 2004   | COMMENTS     

President Bush announced a “Healthy Marriage” initiative Jan. 14 that will invest $1.5 billion in programs that promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, and there is speculation that the president will officially announce the initiative in his upcoming State of the Union address, the New York Times reported.

Social conservatives praised the initiative for promoting marriage, but they also voiced concern that marriage must be protected through a proposed Federal Marriage Amendment banning legal recognition for gay couples.

Tony Perkins, executive director of the Family Research Council, a conservative lobby group, said in an e-mail newsletter that the group’s political opponents are seeking to redefine marriage out of existence and that the president “must use his upcoming State of the Union Address to clarify his support for a federal marriage amendment.”

“Doing so would not only enhance the amendment’s chances for success, but it would also garner the president greater support among the American public, which is increasingly supportive of efforts to protect marriage,” Perkins said.

The Times reported Wednesday that administration officials did not know yet if the president would use the State of the Union Address, set for Jan. 26, to promote a constitutional amendment, but they expressed confidence that the “healthy marriage” initiative would please conservatives.

Yet some social conservatives remain dissatisfied by what they see as a president waffling on a critical issue for them.

“We have a hard time understanding why the reservation,” said Glenn T. Stanton, a policy analyst at Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization as reported in the New York Times. “You see him inching in the right direction. But the question for us is, why this inching? Why not just get there?”

The Bush administration has struggled to take a clear stance on gay marriage since even before the president’s inauguration three years ago. In the vice presidential debates during the 2000 campaign, Dick Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter, indicated that the issue of same-sex unions should be left to the states to decide.

In an interview last week with the Denver Post, Cheney reiterated that position. But at the same time, he said if the president endorses a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, he would support the administration’s position.

“What I said in 2000 was that the question of whether or not some sort of status, legal status or sanction ought to be granted in the case of a relationship between two individuals of the same sex was historically a matter the states had decided and resolved, and that is the way I preferred it,” Cheney said.

But “at this stage, obviously, the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes.”

According to the Denver Post, Cheney declined to say whether he has discussed the issue of gay marriage with the president, or has shared his perspective as the parent of a gay daughter.

“I don’t talk about the advice I give the president,” Cheney said. “That is why he listens.”

Mary Cheney is a well-known figure in the Colorado gay community, having worked for the Colorado Rockies baseball team and Coors Brewing Co., where, among other duties, she worked on outreach to gay men and lesbians, according to the Denver Post.

In December, President Bush said he would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage “if necessary,” without clearly defining that qualifier. At the same time, Bush suggested that the existing Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996 and signed by President Clinton, sufficiently protected those states that choose not to recognize gay marriages among their own residents or those of other states.