WASHINGTON -- President Bush proclaimed Oct. 12-18, 2003, "Marriage Protection Week."
According to an article in the Associated Baptist Press, the week begins one day after "National Coming Out Day," when gay-rights organizations encourage gays, lesbians and transgendered people to "come out of the closet" and reveal their sexual orientation to family, friends and colleagues.
Bush's Oct. 3 proclamation came a day after the leaders of a group calling itself the Coalition to Protect Marriage announced in a Washington press conference that they were dedicating the week to defining marriage as a heterosexual-only institution, the article said.
Spearheaded by the conservative Family Research Council, the coalition's membership includes The Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, and World magazine.
The week's intent is to build support for the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment in Congress, the article said. Sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), the amendment not only would alter the Constitution to define marriage in exclusively heterosexual terms, but also would override state and local laws conferring many of the benefits of marriage on same-sex couples.
The White House has not announced whether it would support the amendment.
